{"id":959,"date":"2020-04-01T10:30:52","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T10:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/mbhgblog\/?p=959"},"modified":"2020-06-10T16:26:28","modified_gmt":"2020-06-10T16:26:28","slug":"bringing-a-serial-killer-to-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/mbhgblog\/2020\/04\/01\/bringing-a-serial-killer-to-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"[:en]Bringing a serial killer to justice[:]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[:en]Imagine a serial killer travelling across provinces, attacking the young and old, healthy and sick, rich and poor, with&nbsp;increased confidence that they haven\u2019t been stopped yet.<\/p>\n<p>One day they arrive in a new place and identify a new target to attack and kill. However, this time they have chosen&nbsp;someone who is ready and willing to put up a fight. They are subdued, taken into custody by the police and imprisoned.&nbsp;However, they are quick to make a prison break by damaging the walls of their prison cell and thus are able to escape.&nbsp;Not long after this, after triggering the alarm system, they are surrounded by snipers with their lasers pointed at their&nbsp;arms, legs, chest and head until reinforcements arrive. They are sentenced to death and locked up in prison until then.&nbsp;Finally, when the day of their death penalty arrives no one is sad to see them go and the people affected are overcome&nbsp;with a feeling of relief.<\/p>\n<p><em>Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis<\/em>) is the bacterium responsible for infecting people and causing&nbsp;tuberculosis (TB) through aerosol droplets and infects millions of people annually around the world. And so, if we read&nbsp;the above story in the context of <em>M. tuberculosis<\/em> infection and TB, it reads as follows\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Imagine a <del>serial killer<\/del> bacterium travelling across provinces, attacking the young and old, healthy and sick, rich and&nbsp;poor, with increased confidence that they haven\u2019t been stopped yet due to their ability to resist the action of anti-TB&nbsp;drugs, termed acquired drug resistance. This bacterium is <em>M. tuberculosis<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>One day <del>they arrive in a new place and identify a new target to attack and kill<\/del> the bacterium infects a new host.&nbsp;However, this <del>time they have chosen someone who<\/del> host\u2019s immune system, the first defence of the host against an&nbsp;infecting bacterium, is ready and willing to put up a fight. <del>they are subdued, taken into custody by the police and&nbsp;imprisoned<\/del> This results in the bacterium being engulfed by the phagosome, a vesicle formed around an intracellular&nbsp;bacterium to contain it and prevent it from further infecting the host. However,<del> they are quick to make a prison break&nbsp;by damaging the walls of their prison cell and thus are<\/del> the bacterium is able to rupture the walls of the phagosome,&nbsp;enabling its escape. Not long after this, <del>after triggering the alarm system<\/del> the bacterium\u2019s escape from the phagosome&nbsp;triggers the host\u2019s immune system and <del>they are surrounded by snipers with their lasers pointed at their arms, legs,&nbsp;chest and head<\/del> the bacterium is surrounded by ubiquitin, a small protein responsible for tagging other proteins,&nbsp;organelles, and intracellular pathogens for degradation, attached at specific target proteins aided by an E3 ubiquitin&nbsp;ligase enzyme. <del>until reinforcements arrive<\/del> The surrounding of the bacterium by ubiquitin recruits autophagy adaptors&nbsp;(known as LC3, p62, NBR1, NDP52 and optineurin) to aid this process, <del>They are sentenced to death and locked up in&nbsp;prison until then<\/del> preventing the replication of the bacterium and allowing the killing of the bacterium. <del>Finally, when&nbsp;the day of their death penalty arrives no one is sad to see them go and the people affected are overcome with a feeling&nbsp;of relief.<\/del> Finally, once the phagosome has closed, it binds with the lysosome, a degradative cellular compartment that&nbsp;breaks down proteins, and the bacterium is destroyed. This process is called xenophagy, and in this way the host&nbsp;immune system fights the TB infection.<\/p>\n<p>However, the specific <em>M. tuberculosis<\/em> proteins to which the ubiquitin attaches&nbsp;(the arms, legs, chest and head of the&nbsp;serial killer)&nbsp;is unknown and <em>M. tuberculosis<\/em> has also developed novel ways to hijack this system to use it for its own&nbsp;benefit. In an effort to further our understanding of the host\u2019s immune response to intracellular <em>M. tuberculosis<\/em>&nbsp;infection, the aim of my project is to identify the proteins tagged with ubiquitin and the E3 ubiquitin ligase enzymes&nbsp;involved in this process using computer and laboratory techniques.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h5><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-966 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/mbhgblog\/files\/2020\/04\/Keren-e1585572592331.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"194\">&nbsp;<\/h5>\n<h5>Written by: Ms Keren de Buys<\/h5>\n<h5>Postgraduate level: PhD (Molecular Biology) at Stellenbosch University node of the DST\/NRF Centre of Excellence for Biomedical Tuberculosis Research housed within MBHG<\/h5>\n<h5>Ms de Buys is currently a PhD candidate within the TB Host Genetics Research Group at MBHG. Her project aims to identify the mycobacterial proteins targeted by E3 ligases during xenophagy.<\/h5>\n<p>[:]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[:en]Imagine a serial killer travelling across provinces, attacking the young and old, healthy and sick, rich and poor, with&nbsp;increased confidence that they haven\u2019t been stopped yet. One day they arrive in a new place and identify a new target to attack and kill. However, this time they have chosen&nbsp;someone who&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10949,"featured_media":1034,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2048,72179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-popular-science-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/mbhgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/mbhgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/mbhgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/mbhgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10949"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/mbhgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=959"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/mbhgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1010,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/mbhgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions\/1010"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/mbhgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/mbhgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/mbhgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/mbhgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}