Manoil Lab<\/a>. To do this we disrupted each gene so that the cells couldn\u2019t make any more protein \u2014 they were left with a now dwindling supply of whatever they\u2019d previously made. Then we would watch the cells under a microscope to determine when and how cellular processes would fail.\u00a0<\/p>\nAs an example, we knocked out a gene that coded for a protein that we found was responsible for cell wall synthesis \u2014 it makes the protein-sugar chainmail that prevents the cells from rupturing, or lysing. And you can watch the video we recorded to see what happened: The cells grew and divided for a while, but then all of a sudden they inflated and just popped.<\/p>\n
![\"small](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/cell_growth.gif\")
The cells, outlined in red, grow and divide until they swell and burst. Their red outlines disappear as they explode. Photo: H. James Choi, Kevin J. Cutler, Teresa W. Lo and Paul Wiggins<\/p>\n
In that example, something strange happened. We would expect the cell walls to start to fail almost immediately after the disruption happened because every time the cells divide, the remaining protein is divided among the offspring cells, so pretty quickly there wouldn\u2019t be enough to sustain the new cell walls. However, growth continued, one generation after another, before the cells finally failed after four rounds of division!<\/p>\n
Why did it take so long? Gene after gene showed the same pattern. We realized that each cell must have made a ton of extra proteins \u2014 far more than it needed. So after we knocked out that essential gene, the cell was able to run on fumes for a while \u2014 and was even able to pass stores of that protein on to its offspring. That finding was initially a huge surprise. We all expected, naively, that if a cell only needed a few copies of a protein to function, it would only make a few \u2014 anything more would be a waste of resources and energy. It\u2019d be like taking a seven-day trip and packing 30 pairs of socks. And yet, this behavior seemed to be common for lots of essential genes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What do you think is the cause of this protein overabundance?<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/paul-wiggins-300x300.jpeg\")
Paul Wiggins Photo: University of Washington<\/p>\n
PW: Baking is a good analogy. If you want to make an apple pie, you probably only buy as many apples as you need for that recipe. But you keep a large quantity of salt in your pantry. You might only need a teaspoon of salt to make any given meal, but none of us go to the store and buy salt a teaspoon at a time. Salt is so cheap and easy to store that, relative to the cost of other ingredients in your meal, it\u2019s basically free to keep in large quantities. And critically, you don\u2019t want to run out of salt when you\u2019re cooking.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We demonstrated that something analogous is happening in A. baylyi cells for most of the essential genes. Only about 30% of a cell\u2019s essential genes code for proteins that are \u201cexpensive\u201d in that the cells need these proteins in large numbers. It would be very costly to, say, double an already large number. These are the apples in our apple pie analogy \u2014 the cell makes just enough of those proteins to get by.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The remaining 70% of essential genes, however, code for proteins that the cell does not need in large numbers. In fact, relative to that other 30%, the cell needs so few of these proteins that it\u2019s basically free to produce a bunch of extras. Doubling the production of those proteins, say from 30 to 60 copies, is a drop in the bucket if the cell\u2019s overall budget is three million proteins. So the cell says, \u201cScrew it, it\u2019s virtually free. Let\u2019s make extra so we don\u2019t run out.\u201d In some cases a cell might make 10 times more protein than it will ever need.<\/p>\n
Why is this strategy useful for the cells?<\/p>\n
PW: This overabundance strategy is important because otherwise a cell might fail to produce enough of something critical. Protein synthesis is an imprecise process \u2014 cells sometimes make a little more or a little less of things than they\u2019re programmed to make. Some essential proteins are made at such low numbers that any deviation from the plan could leave a cell with zero copies of that protein. This is less of a problem for essential proteins that are made in much higher numbers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How do these findings support or challenge previous ideas about how cells function?<\/p>\n
PW: Depending on who you talk to, this is either definitely wrong or completely obvious. On the one hand, it\u2019s a really ingrained idea that organisms are always optimizing everything, which would naively suggest that cells should make exactly what they need \u2014 no more, no less. However, this is clearly not the case. Other studies have observed these kinds of protein surpluses in cells before, but it wasn\u2019t appreciated quite how wide-spread this phenomenon was. Previously researchers proposed that overabundance might be a hedge against changing conditions \u2014 maybe cells are stockpiling proteins in case times get tough. We\u2019re suggesting that it\u2019s a hedge against the cells failing to make the right number of essential proteins.<\/p>\n
Co-authors include H. James Choi<\/a>, a UW postdoctoral researcher of physics; Teresa W. Lo and Dean Huang<\/a>, former UW doctoral students of physics; Kevin J. Cutler<\/a>, a UW graduate student of physics; and William Ryan Will<\/a>, a UW postdoctoral researcher of laboratory medicine and pathology.<\/p>\nThis research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.<\/p>\n
For more information, contact Wiggins at pwiggins@uw.edu<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a new study, UW researchers explored why cells \u201cstockpile\u201d some proteins that are required for growth. Shown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[103,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-412103","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Small](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/lead-art-v2-1200x449.jpg\")
In a new study, UW researchers explored why cells \u201cstockpile\u201d some proteins that are required for growth. Shown here is a series of \u201cheat map\u201d images that detail the abundance of a required protein over five bacterial generations \u2014 red represents more protein within the cell, while dark blue represents less. When the researchers disabled the gene necessary to make the protein, the abundance of that protein diminished in each generation (top row). The cells in the bottom row had a functioning gene, so the protein remained abundant. Photo: H. James Cho et. al\/Science Advances<\/p>\n