Molecular and Genome Biology of Microbes

Microbial genome biology is a rapidly expanding field that couples genomics and proteomics with molecular, cellular, and structural biology to understand microbial organisms. Microbes offer unique advantages for graduate training because their smaller genomes and proteomes and their diverse metabolisms can be studied comprehensively, because they are highly amenable to currently emerging methodologies, because they fundamentally impact human health, agriculture, the economy, and the environment, and because they offer unparalleled insights into the evolution of life on earth. Our group provides graduate student training in Molecular and Genome Biology of Microbes. Participating labs offer state-of-the-art training in research areas that focus on molecular, biochemical, or structural approaches to study microbial transcription, gene regulation, regulatory RNAs, DNA replication, DNA recombination and DNA repair, transposition, and other genome biology processes. The focus group provides research training in systems biology approaches to analyze the operation and interactions of microbial regulatory circuits (gene arrays, proteomics, gene network and pathway modeling, computational biology, etc.). UW-Madison is a world-renowned leader in molecular studies of microbes, and brings together researchers from many departments (e.g., Bacteriology, Biochemistry, Biomolecular Chemistry, Genetics, Engineering, and Plant Pathology).

Our focus group hosts twice-monthly meetings of the “Microbial Mechanisms Forum” with an emphasis on graduate student presentations Tuesdays at 4 pm (check our web site for a current schedule and location). Our group also hosts a leading international meeting on microbial mechanisms at UW-Madison every August: “Molecular Genetics of Bacteria and Phages“.

Focus Group Chair Robert Landick
Biochemistry Department
Control of transcription elongation; RNA polymerase structure/function
landick@bact.wisc.edu