Cells detect and adapt to changes in metabolite levels. This involves several cellular mechanisms, e.g., the activation of mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin), transcriptional regulation and post-transcriptional regulation of metalite-sensitive proteins. An important class of post-transcriptional regulators are upstream open reading frames (ORFs). In normal conditions, upstream ORFs could compete with main ORFs during translation, thereby turning off gene expression. In contrast, main ORFs could be favourably translated during stress, hence turning on gene expression. To investigate how uORFs control translation, we aim to develop a system combining fluorescence-activated cell sorting and high-throughput DNA sequencing (FACS-seq).