Engineering "capture compounds" to probe cell growth

Monday, December 17, 2018 - 16:00 in Biology & Nature

In 1969, scientist Michael Cashel was analyzing the compounds produced by starved bacteria when he noticed two spots appearing on his chromatogram as if by magic. Today, we know one of these “magic spots,” as researchers call them, as guanosine tetraphosphate, or ppGpp for short. We also understand that it is a signaling molecule present in virtually all bacteria, helping tune cell growth and size based on nutrient availability. And yet, despite decades of study, precisely how ppGpp regulates bacterial growth has remained rather mysterious. Delving further requires a more comprehensive list of the molecules that ppGpp binds to exert its effects. Now, collaborators from MIT’s departments of Biology and Chemistry have developed a method to do just that, and used their new approach to pinpoint over 50 ppGpp targets in Escherichia coli — roughly half which had not been identified previously. Many of these targets are enzymes required to produce nucleotides, the building blocks of...

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