The Waksman Lab
Welcome to the Waksman lab’s website! We work on the Structural and Molecular Biology of secretion systems in bacteria. Secretion systems are important virulence factors in pathogenic bacteria and also play essential roles in bacterial survival, adaptation, and evolution. We focus mostly on two secretion systems i) Type 4 Secretion Systems (T4SS) and ii) specialised assembly and secretion machines involved in pilus biogenesis. These systems form large nanomachines embedded in the bacterial membranes. Our goal is to understand how these machines work. To do so, we use a multi-disciplinary approach combining structural (electron microscopy, X-ray crystallography), molecular (cloning, tagging), biophysical (mass spectrometry, EPR, FRET, etc.) and cell biological (fluorescence microscopy) techniques. Click on the links below to learn a little bit more about the systems we study. o Type 4 Secretion Systems o Pilus biogenesis
Recent publications
Cryo-EM structure of a type IV
secretion system
Mechanism of effector capture
and delivery by the type IV
secretion system from
Legionella pneumophila
Recent reviews
From conjugation to T4S
systems in Gram-negative
bacteria: a mechanistic biology
perspective
Commentaries
On Science,
Brexit, Covid-19, and the
Environmental Crisis published by
The European Scientist and
Nature
