Function & mechanisms of bacterial immune systems
Research in the Swarts lab focusses on the functional, structural, and mechanistic characterization of protein complexes that control prokaryotic immunity. This includes prokaryotic Argonaute proteins, CRISPR-Cas systems, and more. These immune systems are not only interesting from fundamental biology and evolution perspectives, but also because they can be repurposed as tools for programmable genome editing or nucleic acid detection.
Keywords
Argonaute / CRISPR-Cas / prokaryotic immune systems / RNA interference / protein-nucleic acid interactions / evolution