Our long-dreamt-of project on understanding the effects of widely varying tRNA gene copy number is finally complete! In a new paper, we describe the growth consequences of altering redundancy in the bacterial translation machinery. We find that the costs and benefits of redundancy vary with the possible growth rate, i.e. it is nutrient-driven. This was a monster project with tons of hard work by Parth Raval, with excellent support from our collaborators Jenna Gallie and Wing Yui Ngan from the Max Plank Institute in Plon. Read the eLife Digest to get a quick summary, and the paper to find lots of interesting details! Image credit: Gene Drendel.
AdaptationLab 