Séminaire CIRI : Dr. Dr. Zeynep BAHAROGLU

Dr. Zeynep BAHAROGLU (Institut Pasteur - Unité "Plasticité du Génome Bactérien" - Département Génomes et Génétique), « RNA queuosine modification and response to antibiotics in Vibrio cholerae »

Abstract: Antibiotic overuse and misuse in clinical and farming contexts contribute to resistance development, during treatment of infection, but also as antibiotic gradients in soil and water, the natural reservoir of many bacteria. Using such non lethal antibiotic doses, we have linked 23 tRNA and rRNA modification enzymes with specific responses to various antibiotics in V. cholerae. We further studied the molecular mechanisms underlying this specificity in the absence of tgt/queuosine (Q) modification. We showed that (i) the absence of Q impacts tyrosine codon decoding and leads to translational reprogramming in response to stress. (ii) A protein's codon usage bias can influence its translation in a Q modification dependent way. (iii) Candidate transcripts subject to modification tunable translation can be identified in silico based on their codon content in bacteria. Our results highlight the existence of an epitranscriptomic and translational control of the bacterial response to antibiotic stress.