Systems biology of Lysine acetylation in phage infection

Our modern-day molecular biology is founded on research centering bacterial viruses or bacteriophages. This research led to crucial insights in fundamental microbiology and resulted in the most commonly used biotechnological tools in research and industry. During phage infection phages 'hijack' the bacterial metabolism in efficient and diverse manners such as cell wall modification and changes in replication, transcription and translation. Our previous research indicates there is another important layer of phage-based regulation: acetylation-based post-translational modification (PTMs) of proteins in infected cells. In the ACES project we will perform a systematic review of phage- & bacteria-encoded acetyltransferases that are important for phage infection. By applying state-of-the-art proteomics and bioinformatics methods, we will unravel these PTMs to the systems biology level and investigate the specific biological function during phage infection. As such we hope to gain groundbreaking insights regarding the bacterium/phage interaction and complementary work towards antibacterial strategies and synthetic biological applications.