Gene-Wei Li, UCSF, A quantitative view of the bacterial proteome
https://sites.google.com/site/geneweili/about-me
Protein biosynthesis is the biggest consumer of cellular energy during proliferation. The composition of the proteome is therefore tightly regulated in order to achieve efficient use of ribosome. At UCSF, I have made several key discoveries revealing how bacteria precisely control the speed of protein synthesis. First, I found that, contrary to current dogma, translation rate in vivo is independent of codon usage. Instead, pervasive ribosome pausing throughout the transcriptome is driven by internal Shine-Dalgarno sequences. This observation provides critical insights into the selection of coding sequences. Second, by developing a method to quantify the absolute rate of protein synthesis for nearly all genes in bacteria, I showed that many proteins have precisely controlled expression levels that quantitatively reflect their functions and the cell's physiology. This set of methods and genome-wide data provides a unique way to broadly characterize many specific cellular processes, from design principles of transcriptional regulation to metabolic pathways.
Location: Carl Icahn Lab 101
Date/Time: 03/25/13 at 4:15 pm - 03/25/13 at 5:15 pm
Category: Quantitative & Computational Biology
Department: Lewis-Sigler Institute
