Lecturer: Dr. Shlomi Reuveni
Affiliation: Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School
Abstract:
Cells grow and divide, doubling their entire
content in the process. Proteins are an
indispensable part of the cell’s content, and
are synthesized by ribosomes. In particular,
ribosomes synthesize ribosomal proteins – i.e.,
their own building blocks. And so, if a cell is to
double, ribosomes are to double themselves as
they double the proteome. Theoretical limits
on the doubling time of cells, and on the
required fraction of ribosomal proteins in the
proteome, follow. We show that these limits
are sensitive to coarse features of the
ribosome, and present an array of evidence for
their formative power on ribosome
architecture in numerous organisms and in
organelles.