How Salmonella manipulates the ubiquitin system to build its intracellular niche 

Intracellular bacteria, like Salmonella, often establish a replicative niche inside their host cell, where they reside and multiply. Forming, nurturing, and defending such a niche requires controlling the architecture and dynamics of the surrounding endocytic system. While the maturation steps of the Salmonella vacuolar niche are well characterized, how the bacteria swiftly manipulate the endocytic system with such spatiotemporal precision remains puzzling. Bacterial proteins can hijack host enzymes to affect post-translational modifications (PTMs) of host traffic-regulating proteins. Recently, non-degradative ubiquitination of traffic-regulating proteins emerged as PTM organizing endocytic dynamics. This project investigates how Salmonella manipulates the host ubiquitin system to establish its intracellular niche. 

This independent line of research is supported by a personal Veni Grant of the NWO Talent Programme. 

Manuscript in preparation.

Associated publications:

Berlin I*, Sapmaz A, Stévenin V, Neefjes J. 2023 (review)

Ubiquitin and its relatives as wizards of the endolysosomal system

Journal of Cell Science. 136 (4): jcs260101. https://doi.org/10.1242/jcs.260101 (.pdf)

Stévenin V*, Neefjes J. 2022 (review)

Control of host PTMs by intracellular bacteria: an opportunity towards novel anti-infective agents. 

Cell Chemical Biology. 29(5):741-756. doi: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2022.04.004. (.pdf)