During her PhD studies, Adriana Chrenková has studied bacterial kinases and their links to toxin-antitoxin systems and phage defence. Toxin-antitoxin systems are genetic elements in bacteria encoding a toxin protein and an antitoxin protein, able to counteract the toxin. Adriana Chrenková studied a bacterial kinase named HipL with an unusual internal translation initiation start site, presenting a novel way of regulating bacterial toxin-antitoxin systems, where both the toxin and the antitoxin are produced from a single gene. The research findings offer new insights into how bacterial toxin-antitoxin systems are regulated, and how they might be related to phage defense.

The PhD study was completed at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Aarhus University.

This summary was prepared by the PhD student.

Time: Tuesday, 9 April 2024 at 13:00
Place: Building 1870, room 816, Faculty Club, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University, Universitetsbyen 81, 8000 Aarhus C
Title of PhD thesis: Many from One: Studying Unusual Translational Regulation of a Bacterial Hip Kinase

Contact information: Adriana Chrenková, e-mail: adch@mbg.au.dk, tel.: +45 50 30 41 33

Members of the assessment committee:
Professor Maria Selmer, Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Uppsala University, Sweden

Asc. Professor Sine Svenningsen, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Senior Researcher Jan Trige Rasmussen (chair), Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University, Denmark

Main supervisor:
Professor Ditlev Egeskov Brodersen, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University, Denmark

Language: The PhD dissertation will be defended in English

The defence is public.
The PhD thesis is available for reading at the Graduate School of Natural Sciences/GSNS, Jens Baggesens Vej 53, building 5221, 8200 Aarhus N.