Projects

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  Molecular characterization of genome conformation in rhizobium symbionts of clover

  Core Project

  Researchers study how mutualism between legumes and nitrogen-fixing rhizobia drives evolutionary differentiation. They explore genome architecture and gene expression using Hi-C and RNA-seq.

Publications

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  Aleshintsev et al., 2025

  Aleshintsev, A., Way, L. E., Guerra, B., Serwaa, L. A., Molina, M., Wang, X., & Kim, H. J. (2025). ParB C-terminal lysine residues are essential for dimerization, in vitro DNA sliding and in vivo function. bioRxiv.

  https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.06.10.659001
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  Izquierdo-Martinez et al., 2025

  Izquierdo-Martinez, A., Schäper, S., Brito, A. D., Liao, Q., Tesseur, C., Sorg, M., Botinas, D. S., Wang, X., & Pinho, M. G. (2025). Chromosome segregation dynamics during the cell cycle of Staphylococcus aureus. Nat Commun 16, 8626.

  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-63634-5
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  Liao et al., 2025

  Liao, Q., Brandão, H. B., Ren, Z., & Wang, X. (2025). Replisomes restrict SMC-mediated DNA-loop extrusion in vivo. Nat Commun 16, 7151.

  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-62596-y
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  Mishra et al., 2025

  Mishra, A., Jackson, A. E., Wang, X., & Kearns, D. B. (2025). The SinR-SlrR Heteromer Attenuates Transcription of a Long Operon of Flagellar Genes in Bacillus subtilis. Journal of Molecular Biology, 437 (12): 169123.

  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmb.2025.169123
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  O’Neal et al., 2025

  O’Neal, L. G., Drucker, M. N., Khanh Lai, N. Clemente, A. F., Campbell, A. P., Way, L. E., Hong, S., Holmes, E. E., Rancic, S. J., Sawyer, N., Wang, X., & Thrall, E. S. (2025). The B. subtilis replicative polymerases bind the sliding clamp with different strengths to tune replication processivity and fidelity. Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 53, Issue 14, gkaf721.

  https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaf721
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  Sanath-Kumar et al, 2025

  Sanath-Kumar, R., Rahman, A., Ren, Z., Reynolds, I. P., Augusta, L., Fuqua, C., Weisberg, A. J., & Wang, X. (2025). Linear dicentric chromosomes in bacterial natural isolates reveal common constraints for replicon fusion. mBio 16:e01046-25.

  https://doi.org/10.1128/mbio.01046-25
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  Baglivo et al., 2024

  Baglivo, I., Malgieri, G., Roop, R. M. 2nd, Barton, I. S., Wang, X., Russo, V., Pirone, L., Pedone, E. M., & Pedone, P. V. (2024). MucR protein: Three decades of studies have led to the identification of a new H-NS-like protein. Molecular Microbiology, 00, 1-14.

  https://doi.org/10.1111/mmi.15261
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  Mishra et al., 2024

  Mishra, A., Hughes, A. C.. Amon, J. D., Rudner, D. Z., Wang, X., & Kearns, D. B. (2024). SwrA-mediated multimerization of DegU and an upstream activation sequence enhance flagellar gene expression in Bacillus subtilis. Journal of Molecular Biology, 436 (4), 168419.

  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmb.2023.168419
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  Barton et al., 2023

  Barton, I. S., Ren, Z., Cribb, C. B., Pitzer, P. E., Baglivo, I., Martin, D. W., Wang, X., & Roop, R. M. (2023). Brucella MucR acts as an H-NS-like protein to silence virulence genes and structure the nucleoid. mBio, 14(6), Article e02201-23.

  https://doi.org/10.1128/mbio.02201-23
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  Ren et al., 2023

  Ren, Z., Takacs, C. N., Brandão, H. B., Jacobs-Wagner, C., & Wang, X. (2023). Organization and replicon interactions within the highly segmented genome of Borrelia burgdorferi. PLoS Genetics, 19(7), Article e1010857.

  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1010857