Michelle’s work on bioRxiv

12 Jun 2018 by rasi

We just submitted Michelle Kriner’s work for peer review. Michelle found that bacteria produce a spurt of the amino acid serine through glycine catabolism when they run out of glucose. Any excess serine produced during this process needs to be exported by the SdaC transporter to prevent toxic incorporation of serine into bacterial cell wall. To our knowledge, this is the first description of toxicity mediated by endogenously produced serine and its amelioration through export. Read our manuscript on bioRxiv. This work was motivated by our earlier finding of serine depletion during bacterial biofilm formation. Michelle led this project from start to finish, and shepherded it through several unexpected turns and twists. Congratulations, Michelle!