Intracellular nickel trafficking and regulation

From the Chivers lab: First-row transition metals are essential for life in all organisms. However, they can be toxic in excess and must be precisely regulated. We focus on the nickel-dependent transcriptional regulator NikR, which is found in a wide variety of microbes. We are interested in various aspects of NikR function including how nickel activates NikR for DNA-binding and how and when NikR senses nickel inside the cell. We use a wide variety of experimental methods ranging from spectroscopic techniques to molecular genetics to address these questions both in the test tube and inside the cell.

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