Achievements
New antioxidant system
A periplasmic reducing system protects single cysteine residues from oxidation.
Bacteria possess an ingenious mechanism for preventing oxygen from harming the building blocks of the cell. We made this discovery by modifying the DNA of the intestinal bacterium Escherichia coli. By means of this model organism, we have uncovered the existence of a mechanism that repairs proteins in the cell that have been damaged by oxygen. The research results are being published in the eminent scientific journal Science. At the same time, we created an animation that illustrates our finding.
