Academic year:

• Madiha Salim continued her summer research project on fractionation of E. coli to examine isoAsp concentration in specific compartments.
• Brianne McNeal pursued her studies of aggregated proteins and found increases in protein aggregation in PCM-deficient cells under some conditions
• Adam Bussell examined the effect of combining a groEL (chaperone) mutation with a pcm mutation.

Summer:

• Matt Sorensen, a Merck/AAAS Research Fellow, separated viable and inviable stationary-phase cells by density, to investigate whether PCM is more active in the viable fraction.
• Adam Bussell and Amber Cibrario, also Merck/AAAS Research Fellows, refined an HPLC method for isoAsp detection in cell extracts.
• Casey Connolly measured protein aggregation in stressed and unstressed stationary-phase cells with and without PCM.
• Heather Peterson looked for effects of a pcm mutation on the amount of oxidized proteins in stationary-phase cells.