Excellent piece on bacterial cell size control by Sander Tans group

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4680914/ in Scientific Reports. I think this represents some concrete molecular progress on the question of how bacteria link growth, replication and division. This was made possible by live-cell imaging of DNA replication so that the various periods of the cell cycle could be imaged and correlations with size and growth quantified. I'm looking forward to seeing the bacterial size control field move beyond the phenomenology of the past two years and get into some molecular mechanisms as we have for budding yeast. How this completely different control system evolved to couple growth and division will form an interesting point of comparison with the eukaryotic system. Onwards!

Andreas Doncic leaves the lab to start as an Assistant Prof at UT Southwestern

The end of an era. It is already clear that the lab chronology will be defined by the time Andreas was in the lab and the time after. It is excellent news that he landed the position at UT Southwestern in their very strong cell biology department. I am sure he will succeed there and we wish him all the best.

two beautiful pieces on how cells actually swell in mitosis in jcb

From the Manalis and Piel labs: http://jcb.rupress.org/content/211/4/733.full

Beautiful work by Son et al and Zlotek-Zlotkiewicz et al. who developed two more precise ways of measuring volume revealed that cells take up fluid to swell in mitosis. This helps them round up, possibly to make space for a nice spindle. Evgeny and I tried to write a decent summary here. 

we wrote a review about how cell size differentially affects protein synthesis and how this results in size control in yeast

check it out in TIBS: http://www.cell.com/trends/cell-biology/abstract/S0962-8924%2815%2900193-2

Also, this review provides a bit more context than what is provided in the long form poem we wrote otherwise known as a nature letter. I hope the review helps! Also, Devon and Kurt are following this up and there is more to come on the subject (hopefully) shortly. The differential expression of genes with cell size is a bigger deal than the already big deal, IMHO, of cell size control. 

just put the tenure talk video on youtube! enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCkGxGLaHKg&feature=youtu.be

I think this is destined to gain the thousand or so views of my reappointment talk. still, it would take a lot of globetrotting to give a seminar to 1000 people 50 at a time! I hope you like it (click here)