Research Projects

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is a pulmonary pathogen that can survive various stress conditions. To infect a host, the pathogen must activate defense mechanisms through changes in its transcriptome. Mtb has a genome of 4.4 million bases and encodes around 4000 genes. The transcription process involves initiation, elongation, and termination, with the most crucial step being the initiation factor sigma (σ). Mtb encodes 13 sigma factors, including 12 non-essential ones, which are divided into four groups. The project aims to study how ECF sigma factors help Mtb modulate its transcription network under stress conditions. This will involve gene replacement mutants, RNAseq, whole-cell proteomics, and ChIP-seq experiments. The study will also evaluate ex vivo and in vivo infections to determine their role in intracellular survival.