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Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'
Many microbes and cells are in deep sleep, waiting for the right moment to activate. Biologists discovered a widespread protein that abruptly shuts down a cell’s activity — and turns it back on just as fast.
Melnikov and his graduate student Karla Helena-Bueno discovered Balon in Psychrobacter urativorans, a cold-adapted bacterium native to frozen soils and harvested from Arctic permafrost. They study P. urativorans and other unusual microbes to characterize the diversity of protein-building tools used across the spectrum of life and to understand how ribosomes can adapt to extreme environments. Balon’s ability to halt the ribosome’s activity in its tracks is a critical adaptation for a microbe under stress, said Mee-Ngan Frances Yap, a microbiologist at Northwestern University who wasn’t involved in the work.
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