Short‐term kinetics of rRNA degradation in Escherichia coli upon starvation for carbon, amino acid or phosphate

Ribosomes are absolutely essential for growth but are, moreover, energetically costly to produce. Therefore, it is important to adjust the cellular ribosome levels according to the environmental conditions in order to obtain the highest possible growth rate while avoiding energy wastage on excess ribosome biosynthesis. Here we show, by three different methods, that the ribosomal RNA content of Escherichia coli is downregulated within minutes of...