Question: allan what is interesting about bacterial proteins

Allan Pang answered on 26 Jun 2012:

There are a lot of proteins in a bacterial cell. And proteins in itself is interesting because they are the “functional entities” of a cell.

So why study bacterial proteins? First reason is medical. If you want to kill a bacteria, one way to go is to target their proteins. Some proteins help in defense for the bacteria, for example, the surface of the cell. Second reason is biotechnological application; bacteria do a lot of wonderful stuff (and sometimes weird) within their cell. Because their system is totally different from us, they can produce chemicals and stuff we may need. And the production of these is controlled by proteins. So, understanding how the protein function can help us create more of the products that we need.

In my project, I am looking at bacterial microcompartments, which are made of proteins. What we want to find out is how these proteins are arranged in such a way they can contain a reaction that process alcohols. Once we know how this happens, we use the same bacterial system to create a different reaction inside, for example, to produce oil.