Dynamical aspects of regulation of bacterial proliferation
- Autores: Leticia Galera Laporta
- Directores de la Tesis: Jordi García-Ojalvo (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Pompeu Fabra ( España ) en 2019
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Hyun Youk (presid.), Marc Guell Cargol (secret.), Maria Lluch Senar (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Biomedicina por la Universidad Pompeu Fabra
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TDX
- Resumen
Bacterial proliferation has been studied for more than 100 years, but our knowledge of the mechanisms that control its dynamical aspects is still very limited. In this Thesis we have studied, at both single-cell and population levels, different aspects of the main regulators of bacterial proliferation, namely the cell cycle, biomass production and membrane stability. Our goal has been to shed light on how perturbation of these regulators aects their dynamical responses in a variety of situations. Specifically, we show that the periodic doubling of genes through the bacterial cell cycle partially entrains a genetic oscillator, but that significant coupling only arises when the oscillator is fed back to cell cycle. We have also studied perturbations in the ability of cells to produce biomass, for instance through antibiotics that affect ribosomal function. Our results suggest that survival in the presence of these antibiotics is determined by the ability of the cells to incorporate magnesium ions, which can be captured by membrane potential changes. Finally, we show that interplay between different bacterial species with diverse sensitivities to membrane-targeting antibiotics can have an unexpected outcome in co-culture, which can be explained in a simple manner by the sharing of the antibiotic between the two species.
