Hedvig Tamman
2024 - 2028 • Starting Grant
How has receiving an ERC grant influenced you as a scientist?
Receiving the grant made me realise that I really am a scientist and gave me confidence that I am moving in the right direction with my work. As it happened quite early in my career, I feel a strong responsibility to not only carry out exceptional science but also carry forward Estonian research and support my young colleagues on their research paths to achieve their goals.
Deciphering stringent response proteins and toxin-antitoxin systems in the arms race between bacteria and phages
Bacteriophages, viruses of bacteria, are the most abundant life form on Earth. The prospect of using them in the fight against pathogenic bacteria has long been recognised, but their very high specificity and unpredictable reproduction limit their use in medicine. The mechanisms phages use to fight bacteria are attractive candidates for the development of novel antimicrobial applications, but they are still very poorly understood. The constant co-evolution of phages and bacteria suggests that phages have a way of overcoming the whole wide variety of bacterial defence systems, yet no direct phage mechanisms targeting bacterial stringent response have been identified.
The project hypothesises that as the bacterial toxin-antitoxin systems and stringent response play a part in the arms race between bacteria and phages, the team can provide direct molecular evidence and identify phage proteins involved in these interactions.
Results
The study will bridge several gaps in the phage-bacteria interaction research, advance the research of phage-tolerant bioremediation strains, and give crucial basic knowledge that can lead to the development of novel, efficient phage therapy solutions that target bacterial stress mechanisms.
The project started in 2024 and has been underway for only six months. Thus, it is too early to speak of any significant results. So far, the research has not continued long enough to suggest that the hypothesis was correct, nor that it was incorrect.
Impact
It is important to understand phage-bacteria interactions to comprehend the strong forces involved in evolution. The discoveries of the project can lead to the identification of ways to reduce the waste of resources in biotechnology applications and will give insight into the ways how to manipulate with bacterial stress responses, which in turn can lead to reducing the spread of antibiotic resistance.