Marie-Laurence Lemay

In-depth study of virulent lactococcal phages using CRISPR-Cas9

The Lactococcus lactis bacteria is extensively used to produce an array of fermented dairy products. Notwithstanding the advancements in phage control in the last decades, L. lactis phage sensitivity still poses a constant risk to milk fermentation processes. Virulent lactococcal phages belonging to the sk1 group are by far the most predominant in the dairy industry, yet many of their genes code for proteins of unknown functions.The research project consists of using the CRISPR-Cas9 system to study those genes in the phage model p2 and its host L. lactis MG1363. Bacterial and viral protein synthesis during infection will also be studied using mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics to further characterize the role of phage proteins.