Aaron Setterdahl
Postdoctoral Researcher Associate

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Curriculum vitae

I am studying the regulation of expression of the photosynthetic genes in the photosynthetic bacterium Rhodobacter capsulatus. Among the few known proteins involved in the repression or activation of these genes, I am focusing on the transcriptional repressor, CrtJ. CrtJ regulates the transcription of many of the genes in the heme, bacteriochlorophyll, and cytochrome biosynthetic pathway. It does so by sensing the redox state of the cell directly, or by sensing the levels of intermediates along the pathway. Footprint analysis of CrtJ and its target DNA sequence is a very useful tool, and we have successfully adapted a new, higher throughput method using capillary electrophoresis to obtain high quality DNA footprints. Before arriving at Indiana University, I spent one and a half years working in Japan with a JSPS post-doc fellowship studying cyanobacterial ferredoxin dependent nitrite reductase at Osaka University. My thesis work at Texas Tech University focused on pKa measurements of the redox active cysteines in thioredoxin and related proteins from many organisms such as Escherichia coli, Arabidopsis thaliana, Maize, and R. capsulatus. These measurements help in the understanding of how redox active disulfides break and form under different conditions.