Just-in-time transcription program in metabolic pathways

A primary goal of systems biology is to understand the design principles of the transcription networks that govern the timing of gene expression1,2,3,4,5. Here we measured promoter activity for ∼100 genes in parallel from living cells at a resolution of minutes and accuracy of 10%, based on GFP and Lux reporter libraries3. Focusing on the amino-acid biosynthesis systems of Escherichia coli4, we identified a previously unknown temporal …