Scott Chimileski

Harvard Medical School | HMS

This thesis seeks to advance the field of archaeal biofilms and related social behaviors through the study of the haloarchaeon Haloferax volcanii. Biofilms are multicellular microbial communities enmeshed within an extracellular matrix. Close proximity between biofilm cells facilitates many emergent behaviors and phenotypes, from communication mech...

Citation: Chimileski S and Papke RT (2015) Getting a hold on archaeal type IV pili: an expanding repertoire of cellular appendages implicates complex regulation and diverse functions. Front. Microbiol. 6:362. A commentary on Novel pili-like surface structures of Halobacterium salinarum strain R1 are crucial for surface adhesion by Losensky Type IV...

Restriction-modification (RM) systems have evolved to protect the cell from invading DNAs and are composed of two enzymes: a DNA methyltransferase and a restriction endonuclease. Although RM systems are present in both archaeal and bacterial genomes, DNA methylation in archaea has not been well defined. In order to characterize the function of RM s...

Background Archaea share a similar microbial lifestyle with bacteria, and not surprisingly then, also exist within matrix-enclosed communities known as biofilms. Advances in biofilm biology have been made over decades in model bacterial species, and include characterizations of social behaviors and cellular differentiation during biofilm developmen...

Haloferax volcanii uses extracellular DNA as a source for carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous. However, it can also grow to a limited extend in the absence of added phosphorous, indicating that it contains an intracellular phosphate storage molecule. As Hfx. volcanii is polyploid, it was investigated whether DNA might be used as storage polymer, in a...

Extracellular DNA is found in all environments and is a dynamic component of the microbial ecosystem. Microbial cells produce and interact with extracellular DNA through many endogenous mechanisms. Extracellular DNA is processed and internalized for use as genetic information and as a major source of macronutrients, and plays several key roles with...

The Halobacteriales were once classified with the Pseudomonadales due to their aerobic, heterotrophic, non-spore forming, and rod-shaped morphological characteristics. Today we know them as Archaea belonging to a distinct order within the Euryarchaeota, the Halobacteria, which appear to have methanogens as an evolutionary sister group. Molecular ph...