FEMS Journal publications | EAM | EMBO

Urs Jenal is a Full Professor at Biozentrum at theUniversity of Basel, Switzerland. His research group studies the role of c-di-GMP in pathogenic and non-pathogenic bacteria. This includes biochemical, genetic and cell biology studies of enzymes involved in the synthesis and degradation of c-di-GMP and their regulation in time and space.

They attempt to understand how the regulatory interplay between numerous cellular components involved in c-di-GMP signalling reads out into temporal oscillations and spatial gradients of this signalling compound and how these dynamic changes shape bacterial behaviour, growth and survival. They study mechanisms of c-di-GMP signalling from the atomic to cellular level in model organisms like Caulobacter crescentus, Escherichia coli or Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

They are also interested in the ability of P. aeruginosa to survive antibiotic treatment and to persist in the human patient. This includes the ability of this organism to form biofilms and persist as protected multicellular components and the remarkable capacity to tolerate the exposure to different classes of antibiotics. They strive to define the molecular basis of drug tolerance and persistence in this organism and to decipher how these mechanisms contribute to treatment failure and chronic infections in humans.

Read Prof Urs Jenal’s personal profile.