Lab News

Now available: our yeast fluorescence proteins on Addgene

We are excited to share that Bas Teusink and Dennis Botman got a depositor collection page on Addgene, called the Botman-Teusink Yeast FP Collection (https://www.addgene.org/depositor-collections/botman-teusink-yeast-fp/). This collection features a comprehensive set of yeast codon-optimized fluorescent proteins (FPs) in various plasmids, enabling constitutive overexpression of FPs and tagging of genes of interest with FPs in yeast, both with

Continue Reading

AIMMS festival was a great success!

In the temple of Amsterdam’s music, Bimhuis and Muziekgebouw, Bas and his AIMMS team organized a two-day festival celebrating how multidisciplinary molecular sciences can create societal impact. The music of life is made by orchestra of molecules, and so the venue was a perfect fit. With workshops, keynotes, discussions and poster sessions, the place was

Continue Reading

New paper: Modelling the gene expression cascade of Trypanosoma brucei with novel experimental data

Jurgen and Christoff contributed a kinetic modelling analysis to a publication that came out last month in Nucleic Acid Research. The paper describes improved measurements of globally quantify RNA processing rates and half-lives for mRNAs in the sleeping sickness parasite Trypanosoma brucei. Christoff plugged those values into a kinetic model of gene expression. The modelling

Continue Reading

Bas, Frank and Bob comment in Nature Metabolism on sensing of metabolic rates

How can you measure something that cannot be measured directly? Think of a rate: this must always be inferred from some other measurements. In the 6th of Jan issue of Nature Metabolism the Springer lab describes a new mechanism by which cells can measure metabolic rates – in this case rates of the conversion of the

Continue Reading

A new Nature Comm paper: How a bacterium adapts its membrane fluidity to temperature without a thermometer

A new collaborative paper with Greg Bokinsky has just came out in Nature Communications! You find it here: paper link. When temperature changes, the kinetics of enzymes change (think of the Arrhenius law) as well as their diffusive properties (the diffusion coefficient depends linearly on temperature, at constant viscosity). The change in the diffusion coefficient

Continue Reading

New review: The pectin metabolizing capacity of the human gut microbiota

Ecem Yuksel, Remco Kort, and colleagues wrote a new review about the different bacteria in our intestines that can degrade a certain kind of dietary fiber called pectin, and how this can benefit our gut health. Check out the review here! (Picture from here) The human gastrointestinal microbiota, densely populated with a diverse array of

Continue Reading

Bas speaks at VU’s Opening Academic Year

The new academic year kicked off on 2 September 2024 with the Opening Academic Year. This year’s theme was ‘Reasons for Hope’. Bas was interviewed as part of the panel and spoke as the Director of AIMMS about how we are committed to making a positive impact on life and the environment by accelerating breakthroughs

Continue Reading

Reaching out the general public: our research was mentioned in C2W:Mens & Molecule

C2W:Mens & Molecule is a Dutch publication platform (including a magazine) for independent science journalism for chemistry and life sciences. Our current research on usage of alternative cofactors (e.g. replacing the NADH/NAD couple) in novel metabolic engineering strategies for microbial biotechnology has recently feature in this magazine. We carry out this research in collaboration with

Continue Reading

Summer school “Economic Principles in Cell Biology”

Maaike and Pranas participated in the third summer school on Economic Principles in Cell Biology that took place on the 8-11th July, 2024, in Paris and online. Lab PhD students Francesco and Luis also attended the lectures online. Maaike was one of some 30 participants selected for in-person attendance, and Pranas gave one of the

Continue Reading

How genetic circuits can optimally tune metabolic protein concentrations

Since cells have finite biosynthetic resources for protein synthesis, a rise in one protein concentration is generally at the expense of that of others. A logical consequence is then that phenotypic traits trade-off: cells cannot excel at everything. They cannot grow fast and be very stress tolerant and adaptive to new conditions at the same

Continue Reading

Recent Comments

    Categories