Bacterial Signal Transduction: an E. coli View of the World

All cells sense and respond to physical and chemical cues in their environments. They accomplish this through signal transduction systems—networks of interacting proteins that detect and interpret specific input signals and control appropriate cellular responses. In bacteria, these systems are found in remarkable numbers within individual organisms and across different bacterial species. They play a central role in regulating basic aspects of microbial physiology and mediate responses to diverse environmental signals. In this colloquium, Mark Goulian of the University of Pennsylvania will describe work in which he and colleagues have explored the organization and properties of these networks in the particularly well studied and genetically tractable organism Escherichia coli.