Suckjoon Jun’s lab at UCSD

1/5 Do you use GFP to measure protein abundance? Be very careful. Our new bioRxiv preprint shows that, under translation inhibition, fluorescence can stop tracking how much reporter protein is actually there. Please share widely.

4/5 A nice historical twist: the classic LacZ strategy from Rick Gourse’s lab still worked quantitatively at the ectopic rrnB promoter. Sometimes a biochemical reporter designed by the pioneers of the field survives a perturbation better than its fluorescent successor.

1/5 Do you use GFP to measure protein abundance? Be very careful. Our new bioRxiv preprint shows that, under translation inhibition, fluorescence can stop tracking how much reporter protein is actually there. Please share widely.

2/5 Under nutrient limitation, fluorescence tracked RNA/protein, a quantitative proxy for ribosome abundance, in both E. coli and B. subtilis. But with chloramphenicol, fluorescence stayed flat or fell even as ribosome abundance increased.

1/ Goodbye, New York. We are going to miss you.

16/ Thank you, Michael Shelley, Yuhai Tu, and Indira Goris at CCB/Flatiron Institute, for your hospitality. Thank you also to the Simons Foundation for the Pivot Fellowship that made this year possible. And Stas Shvartsman, I may yet end up exploring the world of developmental biology after all. ;-)

1/ Goodbye, New York. We are going to miss you.

14/ The kiddo promised he would never do it again. I know better.

1/ Goodbye, New York. We are going to miss you.

12/ But the best part of New York was the New Yorkers, and the friends we made here. You proved again and again that the stereotypes about you were wrong. You were kind. You had a great sense of humor. And you always stood up for our kids on the subway.

1/ Goodbye, New York. We are going to miss you.

10/ And the American paintings in the museums. Thank you, Mr. Gene, if I remember your name correctly. Picking up the kids from school and going to the Whitney on Fridays to see Hopper and other favorite American paintings was one of the highlights of our year in New York.

1/ Goodbye, New York. We are going to miss you.

8/ Of course, there was unforgettable street art and graffiti.

1/ Goodbye, New York. We are going to miss you.

6/ Speaking of music, our family was lucky to learn piano at the Greenwich School of Music. We will always remember the piano rooms filled with serene light, and the backyard surrounded by trees and birds.

1/ Goodbye, New York. We are going to miss you.

4/ You gave us music everywhere: jazz musicians in Washington Square Park, chamber music in small rooms, and the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center. Thank you to the musicians of this city for reminding us that what drives a life is not money, but passion.

1/ Goodbye, New York. We are going to miss you.

2/ Our family arrived one year ago. Time flew by.

1/ Out today in Science (@science.org): a result a decade in the making, and one that changed how I think about what cells are doing when they grow. We found a bacterium that grows slower than it could. And we found the molecular switch that lets us reverse it.

9/ A decade-long project across three generations of PhD students who gave their 20s to it. Stuck on the mechanism, we turned to Jade Wang's lab, whose (p)ppGpp and GTP biology took it to a new level. The lesson I keep relearning: collaborate with friends, not business partners.

1/ Out today in Science (@science.org): a result a decade in the making, and one that changed how I think about what cells are doing when they grow. We found a bacterium that grows slower than it could. And we found the molecular switch that lets us reverse it.

7/ So the assumption that flux and proteome composition move together turns out to be one solution among several, not a law. How growth is controlled across much of bacterial diversity remains genuinely open.

1/ Out today in Science (@science.org): a result a decade in the making, and one that changed how I think about what cells are doing when they grow. We found a bacterium that grows slower than it could. And we found the molecular switch that lets us reverse it.

5/ Why would a cell hold its growth below capacity? Because the setting that buys faster growth costs survival. GTP up: faster growth, dies under antibiotics. GTP down: slower growth, endures. Wild-type sits at a regulated balance. Growth and survival pull against each other.

1/ Out today in Science (@science.org): a result a decade in the making, and one that changed how I think about what cells are doing when they grow. We found a bacterium that grows slower than it could. And we found the molecular switch that lets us reverse it.

3/ We tested whether it holds in Bacillus subtilis, which solves the same problem with different wiring. It doesn't, in an instructive way. Block translation and E. coli reorganizes its proteome to cope. B. subtilis barely moves its proteome but throttles amino acid synthesis.

1/ Out today in Science (@science.org): a result a decade in the making, and one that changed how I think about what cells are doing when they grow. We found a bacterium that grows slower than it could. And we found the molecular switch that lets us reverse it.