Go Beam: Go inside a Bacterial cell methylating Mercury
Published on 11/26/21
| Modified on 3/28/24
An exploratory project invites teams of 3 to 4 scientists to propose innovative research, new or disruptive topics, to reduce identified barriers, but also to promote interdisciplinarity and dissemination of information.
Mercury (Hg) is one of the most worrying pollutants on Earth because of its conversion into methylmercury, a powerful neurotoxic, operated by bacteria. The cellular and environmental mechanisms involved in this process are poorly understood.
The Go Beam project aims to characterize mercury methylation at the cellular level, from recognition to export. To this end, we are developing a new interdisciplinary approach combining genetics, mass spectrometry-based analytical chemistry, and state-of-the-art synchrotron imaging and X-ray absorption spectroscopy techniques to probe a collection of methylating/demethylating strains and mutants. Our results will contribute to a better understanding of the risks and lay the foundation for a new approach to mercury methylation.
