What is happening to the proteome of a bacterium like Escherichia coli when it is heated above the temperature of cell death ? For a long time, it was hypothesized that a so-called proteome catastrophe happens when going beyond denaturation, where most of the proteins unfold in a narrow range of temperatures. With the help of incoherent neutron scattering, we were able to find out that on the contrary…
Publication: Diffusive dynamics of bacterial proteome as a proxy of cell death, D. Di Bari et al., ACS Central Science 9 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1021/acscentsci.2c01078