Proteam

Despite advances in genomics and AI-based structure prediction, the molecular functions of a significant portion of human proteins remain unknown, creating a critical bottleneck in biomedical research. To address this challenge, our laboratory previously developed the Bacterial Growth Inhibition Screen (BGIS) pipeline. Its intellectual merit lies in developing a cost-effective, unbiased screening method that leverages recombinant protein toxicity in E. coli to rapidly identify functional domains (e.g., enzymatic, DNA-binding) in uncharacterized proteins.

Using this method, we screened dark proteins in data base and identified candidates that caused significant growth inhibition in bacteria, suggesting they possess biologically important functional domains. This project aims to investigate these candidates in human cells.

This will allow us to: (1) further validate BGIS as a functional annotation tool by determining whether bacterial growth inhibition correlates with phenotypic effects in mammalian cells, and (2) generate functional data on dark proteins, creating a valuable resource for the broader research community.
By bridging bacterial screening with human cell biology, this work will advance our understanding of the dark proteome while providing us with hands-on training in molecular biology, cell culture, and functional genomics.