Skarstad

Welcome to the web pages of Kirsten Skarstad's group HEAD OF GROUP: Kirsten Skarstad Professor, Ph.D

We study regulation of the cell cycle, and are interested in how initiation of replication is controlled and coordinated with cell growth and cell division.

We use mainly the bacterium Escherichia coli as our model system.

Most of our projects are basic science projects aimed at understanding molecular mechanisms and control of chromosome replication and segregation.

Current research involves:
 * understanding the roles of DnaA and SeqA in controlling replication in vivo,
 * understanding the of protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions of the SeqA and DnaA proteins, what kinds of oligomers are formed, and how they work,
 * understanding what role SeqA plays in daughter chromosome segregation,
 * understanding how replication is tied to cell division and whether DnaA and DnaC have roles in this,
 * understanding how the datA site can regulate initiation frequency
 * understanding the basis for over-replication by mutant DnaA219 protein
 * understanding how the replication factory is organized

We are in addition involved in an applied science project within the EU 5th framework programme "Quality of life and management of living resources" which deals with ways to discover new types of drugs targeting the replication apparatus.

We are part of the FUGE platform "Advanced Microbial Science and Technology".