Emma Esterman '20: Senior Thesis Work Published

Bacterial Gene Transfer Agents have distinct DNA packaging machinery

Some microorganisms produce nanostructures that morphologically and genetically resemble viruses, but don't behave like typical viruses. Since these nanostructures can deliver random pieces of bacterial DNA to other cells, they were dubbed gene transfer agents (GTAs). Origin, evolution and function of GTAs remains poorly understood. In the new study, Professor Zhaxybayeva's group tracked evolutionary history of a DNA packaging protein to find out from which type of viruses GTAs evolved. This article is based on the senior thesis of the biology major Emma Esterman'20.

Publication: Emma S Esterman, et al., Evolution of DNA packaging in gene transfer agents, Virus Evolution (2023). DOI: 10.1093/ve/veab015.  

Original Story Source: Biological Sciences at Dartmouth