Investigating phosphorylation-dephosphorylation dynamics during the cell cycle.

Protein phosphorylation is a critical post-translational modification needed for most biological responses. Although we have currently identified hundreds of thousands of different phosphorylation sites, we still lack one fundamental piece of information that is common to every single one of those sites: the rate of phosphorylation and dephosphorylation on individual substrate molecules. It is important to uncover this information, because the dynamics of these “phosphorylation cycles” can control many critical features of a signal response 1. This PhD project will use the Xenopus extract system and mass spectrometry to quantify these dynamics on a global scale.