La Vie Dans Les Plis

La vie dans les plis was premiered at The Firehouse Space (Brooklyn, NY) on June 9, 2014, by violinist Karen Rostron and pianist Mirna Lekić. The piece\u27s title is a reference to an eponimous collection of texts by Belgian author Henri Michaux. There is no direct connection between Michaux\u27s text and the structure of the piece. This choice of title, in addition to its great poetic beauty, is meant as an acknowledgement of my indebtedness to Henri Michaux\u27s writings, and, more generally, to Surrealist - and Surrealist-influenced - poetry, for revealing to me the artistic value of a bold exploration of the self

An Evolutionary Trade-Off between Protein Turnover Rate and Protein Aggregation Favors a Higher Aggregation Propensity in Fast Degrading Proteins

We previously showed the existence of selective pressure against protein aggregation by the enrichment of aggregation-opposing ‘gatekeeper’ residues at strategic places along the sequence of proteins. Here we analyzed the relationship between protein lifetime and protein aggregation by combining experimentally determined turnover rates, expression data, structural data and chaperone interaction data on a set of more than 500 proteins. We find that selective pressure on protein sequences against aggregation is not homogeneous but that short-living proteins on average have a higher aggregation propensity and fewer chaperone interactions than long-living proteins. We also find that short-living proteins are more often associated to deposition diseases. These findings suggest that the efficient degradation of high-turnover proteins is sufficient to preclude aggregation, but also that factors that inhibit proteasomal activity, such as physiological ageing, will primarily affect the aggregation of short-living proteins