Julia Bartels

Sporobeads: The utilization of the Endospore crust of Bacillus subtilis for protein display

© Julia Bartels

The soil bacterium Bacillus subtilis has the incredible ability to form endospores. An endospore is a metabolically inactive resting stage formed intracellularly by the mother cell upon nutrient starvation. These endospores are highly resistant and have a remarkable structure: the DNA is protected by small acid soluble proteins and the spore itself is encased by three protective layers made up of at least 70 different proteins produced by the mother cell. The outermost layer, the crust, is a promising target to functionalize these endospores by genetically fusing a gene of interest to a crust protein gene (see figure), resulting in endospores displaying a desired protein on their surface: so-called Sporobeads.

The aim of my PhD project is the evaluation of the potential of different crust proteins for the utilization as an anchor for such a functionalization. Towards that goal, the native proteins in the crust are quantified. Subsequently, the quantity of heterologously expressed crust proteins and their ability to produce and incorporate protein-fusions are evaluated, utilizing GFP as a proof-of-principle as well as the Laccases from Bacillus pumilus, Bacillus halodurans and Escherichia coli to demonstrate an enzymatic function. The second aim is to establish a standardized toolkit for convenient and efficient generation of functionalized endospores.

I was a member of the 2010, 2011 and 2012 LMU-Munich iGEM-Teams. In addition, I was one of the instructors of the 2014 LMU-Munich iGEM-Team. Please visit our wikis: LMU-Munich 2012 and LMU-Munich 2014 for further information.

Since 05/2015
PhD student at the TU Dresden (Prof. Dr. Mascher)

04/2014-04/2015
PhD student at the LMU Munich (Prof. Dr. Mascher)

2014
Master of Science in Biochemistry at the LMU Munich

2011
Bachelor of Science in Biology at the LMU Munich

2008
European Baccalaureate at the European School in Munich

Bartels J., Blüher A., López Castellanos S., Richter M., Günther M., Mascher T. (2019) The Bacillus subtilis endospore crust: protein interaction network, architecture and glycosylation state of a potential glycoprotein layer. Mol Microbiol. 112(5):1576-1592. doi: 10.1111/mmi.14381. Pubmed

Bartels J., López Castellanos S., Radeck J., Mascher T. (2018) Sporobeads: The Utilization of the Bacillus subtilis Endospore Crust as a Protein Display Platform. ACS Synth Biol. 2018 Feb 16;7(2):452-461. doi: 10.1021/acssynbio.7b00285. [Pubmed]

Radeck J., Kraft K., Bartels J., Cikovic T., Dürr F., Emenegger J., Kelterborn S., Sauer C., Fritz G., Gebhard S., Mascher T. (2013) The Bacillus BioBrick Box: generation and evaluation of essential genetic building blocks for standardized work with Bacillus subtilis. J Biol Eng 7(1): 29. DOI: 10.1186/1754-1611-7-29 [Pubmed]