Our Project: We are working on a fundamental project using E. coli (mostly cell line of 5-alpha and 10-beta) to investigate the effect of protein degradation on the speed of gene expression. Our basic method is co-transforming two plasmids, one that expresses sfGFP with synthetic degradation tags and another expresses mf- Lon protease, to E. Coli cell. The reporter protein concentrations correspond with the degradation strengths of those tags. We use plate reader measurements and time lapse microscopy to characterize the degradation rates at both the single-cell and population level. .
