Our work on ‘useful’ mistakes in bacteria (E. coli) is finally out! Laasya and Parth found that making rebel proteins not encoded by our DNA can be a good thing. In cells that frequently make mistakes, the accumulated ‘junk’ proteins end up triggering a high alert situation. This allows the cells to better deal with various external assaults (like increased temperature, damage to DNA and so on). When everything is normal this isn’t a big deal; in fact the junk makes cells mildly sick. Under stress though, the high alert and error prone cells get the upper hand, leaving behind the more accurate (but less prepared) regular cells. For more: read the paper, and an NCBS news article. And, enjoy this summary cartoon from Pranjal Gupta that was featured on the journal cover!
