# Computational Genomics of Signal Transduction

> **NIH NIH R35** · OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $381,650

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Signal transduction is a universal biological process vital to all organisms. Due to their central role in disease,
signal transduction systems in humans and in bacterial pathogens are the primary targets of drug design. Our
long-term goal is to understand how cells detect, transmit, and adapt to signals. The main focus of this project is
on the bacterial chemotaxis system, which is the best studied model for understanding fundamentals of signal
transduction at the molecular level and also an important determinant of virulence in many pathogenic bacteria.
The main unanswered questions that we propose to address are: (1) which small molecule ligands are
recognized by bacteria, (2) how these signals are transmitted from chemoreceptors to a dedicated kinase, and
3) what are the determinants of receptor/kinase specificity. We propose to build on our previous findings and
capitalize on our tool development to obtain this knowledge in collaboration with several experimental
laboratories and to capture this knowledge as predictive models. These models will be stored in public
databases, such as Pfam and our own MiST (Microbial Signal Transduction) database. Current MiST capabilities
will be enhanced with new search and download options and updated with a vast amount of sequences from the
Human Microbiome Project and other metagenomics datasets, resulting in a resource that can better serve an
even greater scientific community. Finally, we will extend our evolutionary analyses to the key eukaryotic signal
transduction pathway, where we aim at predicting consequences of missense mutations in the context of
developmental disorders and cancer.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10147107
- **Project number:** 5R35GM131760-03
- **Recipient organization:** OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Igor B. Jouline
- **Activity code:** R35 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $381,650
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-05-01 → 2024-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10147107

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10147107, Computational Genomics of Signal Transduction (5R35GM131760-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10147107. Licensed CC0.

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