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Characterization Of The Function Of The Azospirillum Brasilense Che1 Chemotaxis Pathway In The Regulation Of Chemotaxis, Cell Length And Clumping, Amber Nicole Bible

Doctoral Dissertations

Azospirillum brasilense is a gram-negative alphaproteobacterium that lives in the soil where it colonizes the root surfaces of cereals and grasses. The genome of A. brasilense has recently been sequenced and shown to possess four different chemotaxis-like operons. This dissertation project focused on characterizing the Che1 chemotaxis-like signal transduction pathway, which was initially implicated in regulation of the chemotaxis behavior. Deletions of individual genes within the Che1 pathway did not exhibit a null chemotaxis phenotype, leading us to investigate the role of this pathway in the lifestyle of A. brasilense and the mechanism(s) by which it functions. We have used …