A basic business principle is that no worker is irreplaceable; that also holds true for most proteins, the cellular factory workers of our bodies. If we fire a protein—that is, permanently delete it from our genome using genetic engineering—the cell will likely initiate a compensatory mechanism to replace it with other proteins. This mechanism is vital for life to exist, but it makes things extremely difficult for researchers trying to understand the role of each protein. A basic business principle is that no worker is irreplaceable; that also holds true for most proteins, the cellular factory workers of our bodies. If we fire a protein—that is, permanently delete it from our genome using genetic engineering—the cell will likely initiate a compensatory mechanism to replace it with other proteins. This mechanism is vital for life to exist, but it makes things extremely difficult for researchers trying to understand the role of each protein. Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Phys.org – latest science and technology news stories
When proteins go on strike: Yeast colonies reveal hidden roles in some of life’s most basic processes
