Lab News

When Bas Teusink and Douwe Molenaar came to the VU University, about a decade ago, they had just published a thought-provoking paper on how microbial physiology can result from optimal allocation of biosynthetic resources, such as ribosomes, RNA polymerases, amino acids, energy, etc., in order to maximise growth rate (https://doi.org/10.1038/msb.2009.82). Roughly at the same time,

Zoom Celebration at SysBioLab.  Rinke has a tenure track position in Delft, Bas got a new project granted, and Frank published a massive paper in Current Biology together with Johan, all on the same (Mon)day. With such good news it is time to celebrate! Lets open the bottle (that will be delivered to you today)

Biphasic Cell-Size and Growth-Rate Homeostasis by Single Bacillus subtilis Cells Abstract The growth rate of single bacterial cells is continuously disturbed by random fluctuations in biosynthesis rates and by deterministic cell-cycle events, such as division, genome duplication, and septum formation. It is not understood whether, and how, bacteria reject these growth-rate disturbances. Here, we quantified

Growing cells in constant conditions at a fixed exponential growth rate in a shake flask — balanced growth — is arguably the most basic experiment in microbiology. We are so used to it that we sometimes forget to realise that this is not at all so obvious. Not only the average growth rate remains fixed,

Jurgen Haanstra and Bas Teusink collaborated with several research groups on interdisciplinary research combining wetlab experiments with computational models. Haanstra and Teusink collaborated with research groups in Gothenburg (Sweden), Groningen and Heidelberg (Germany). Their work on a quantitative analysis of amino acid metabolism in liver cancer, with Jurgen as co-first author, was just published in

The winning photograph and his creator.

We recently published an article in which we reviewed the different approaches that describe a puzzling metabolic phenomenon called overflow metabolism: (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00018-019-03380-2). Many different organisms secrete ‘overflow products’ in conditions where they grow and reproduce fast. For example, many yeasts produce ethanol, Escherichia coli produces acetate, and cancer cells produce lactate. This behaviour seems counter-intuitive