Oxidative Stress

Due to their residence in heavily irradiated salt flat environments, hypersaline adapted archaea are resistant to high levels of oxidative stress: nearly an order of magnitude more than mesophilic bacteria or archaea. This project aims to uncover the gene regulatory network that regulates this response. Recently, we have discovered a novel transcription factor, RosR, that appears to be unique to hypersaline-adapted archaea and is required for extreme oxidative stress resistance (Sharma et al., 2012). RosR is a major player in a large, interconnected network of transcription factors required for stress survival (Tonner et al., 2014). We seek to understand the function and dynamics of this network.