Dataset Information

Hierarchy in pentose sugar metabolism in Clostridium acetobutylicum.

ABSTRACT: Bacterial metabolism of polysaccharides from plant detritus into acids and solvents is an essential component of the terrestrial carbon cycle. Understanding the underlying metabolic pathways can also contribute to improved production of biofuels. Using a metabolomics approach involving liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, we investigated the metabolism of mixtures of the cellulosic hexose sugar (glucose) and hemicellulosic pentose sugars (xylose and arabinose) in the anaerobic soil bacterium Clostridium acetobutylicum. Simultaneous feeding of stable isotope-labeled glucose and unlabeled xylose or arabinose revealed that,as expected, glucose was preferentially used as the carbon source. Assimilated pentose sugars accumulated in pentose phosphate pathway (PPP) intermediates with minimal flux into glycolysis. Simultaneous feeding of xylose and arabinose revealed an unexpected hierarchy among the pentose sugars, with arabinose utilized preferentially over xylose. The phosphoketolase pathway (PKP) provides an alternative route of pentose catabolism in C. acetobutylicum that directly converts xylulose-5-phosphate into acetyl-phosphate and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate, bypassing most of the PPP. When feeding the mixture of pentose sugars, the labeling patterns of lower glycolytic intermediates indicated more flux through the PKP than through the PPP and upper glycolysis, and this was confirmed by quantitative flux modeling. Consistent with direct acetyl-phosphate production from the PKP, growth on the pentose mixture resulted in enhanced acetate excretion. Taken collectively, these findings reveal two hierarchies in clostridial pentose metabolism: xylose is subordinate to arabinose, and the PPP is used less than the PKP.

SUBMITTER: Aristilde L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4309709 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Hierarchy in pentose sugar metabolism in Clostridium acetobutylicum.

Aristilde Ludmilla L Lewis Ian A IA Park Junyoung O JO Rabinowitz Joshua D JD

Applied and environmental microbiology 20150201 4

Bacterial metabolism of polysaccharides from plant detritus into acids and solvents is an essential component of the terrestrial carbon cycle. Understanding the underlying metabolic pathways can also contribute to improved production of biofuels. Using a metabolomics approach involving liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, we investigated the metabolism of mixtures of the cellulosic hexose sugar (glucose) and hemicellulosic pentose sugars (xylose and arabinose) in the anaerobic soil bacterium ...[more]

PMID: 25527534

Similar Datasets

Project description:Bacterial fermentation of carbohydrates from sustainable lignocellulosic biomass into commodity chemicals by the anaerobic bacterium Clostridium acetobutylicum is a promising alternative source to fossil fuel-derived chemicals. Recently, it was demonstrated that xylose is not appreciably fermented in the presence of arabinose, revealing a hierarchy of pentose utilization in this organism (L. Aristilde, I. A. Lewis, J. O. Park, and J. D. Rabinowitz, Appl Environ Microbiol 81:1452-1462, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1128/AEM.03199-14). The goal of the current study is to characterize the transcriptional regulation that occurs and perhaps drives this pentose hierarchy. Carbohydrate consumption rates showed that arabinose, like glucose, actively represses xylose utilization in cultures fermenting xylose. Further, arabinose addition to xylose cultures led to increased acetate-to-butyrate ratios, which indicated a transition of pentose catabolism from the pentose phosphate pathway to the phosphoketolase pathway. Transcriptome sequencing (RNA-Seq) confirmed that arabinose addition to cells actively growing on xylose resulted in increased phosphoketolase (CA_C1343) mRNA levels, providing additional evidence that arabinose induces this metabolic switch. A significant overlap in differentially regulated genes after addition of arabinose or glucose suggested a common regulation mechanism. A putative open reading frame (ORF) encoding a potential catabolite repression phosphocarrier histidine protein (Crh) was identified that likely participates in the observed transcriptional regulation. These results substantiate the claim that arabinose is utilized preferentially over xylose in C. acetobutylicum and suggest that arabinose can activate carbon catabolite repression via Crh. Furthermore, they provide valuable insights into potential mechanisms for altering pentose utilization to modulate fermentation products for chemical production. IMPORTANCE Clostridium acetobutylicum can ferment a wide variety of carbohydrates to the commodity chemicals acetone, butanol, and ethanol. Recent advances in genetic engineering have expanded the chemical production repertoire of C. acetobutylicum using synthetic biology. Due to its natural properties and genetic engineering potential, this organism is a promising candidate for converting biomass-derived feedstocks containing carbohydrate mixtures to commodity chemicals via natural or engineered pathways. Understanding how this organism regulates its metabolism during growth on carbohydrate mixtures is imperative to enable control of synthetic gene circuits in order to optimize chemical production. The work presented here unveils a novel mechanism via transcriptional regulation by a predicted Crh that controls the hierarchy of carbohydrate utilization and is essential for guiding robust genetic engineering strategies for chemical production.

Project description:An operon comprising two genes, CA_P0037 and CA_P0036, that encode proteins of unknown function that were previously shown to be highly expressed in acidogenic cells and repressed in solventogenic and alcohologenic cells is located on the pSOL1 megaplasmid of Clostridium acetobutylicum upstream of adhE2 A CA_P0037::int (189/190s) mutant in which an intron was inserted at position 189/190 in the sense strand of CA_P0037 was successfully generated by the Targetron technique. The resultant mutant showed significantly different metabolic flux patterns in acidogenic (producing mainly lactate, butyrate, and butanol) and alcohologenic (producing mainly butyrate, acetate, and lactate) chemostat cultures but not in solventogenic or batch cultures. Transcriptomic investigation of the CA_P0037::int (189/190s) mutant showed that inactivation of CA_P0037 significantly affected the expression of more than 258 genes under acidogenic conditions. Surprisingly, genes belonging to the Fur regulon, involved in iron transport (CA_C1029-CA_C1032), or coding for the main flavodoxin (CA_C0587) were the most significantly expressed genes under all conditions, whereas fur (coding for the ferric uptake regulator) gene expression remained unchanged. Furthermore, most of the genes of the Rex regulon, such as the adhE2 and ldhA genes, and of the PerR regulon, such as rbr3A-rbr3B and dfx, were overexpressed in the mutant. In addition, the whole CA_P0037-CA_P0036 operon was highly expressed under all conditions in the CA_P0037::int (189/190s) mutant, suggesting a self-regulated expression mechanism. Cap0037 was shown to bind to the CA_P0037-CA_P0036 operon, sol operon, and adc promoters, and the binding sites were determined by DNA footprinting. Finally, a putative Cap0037 regulon was generated using a bioinformatic approach. Clostridium acetobutylicum is well-known for its ability to produce solvents, especially n-butanol. Understanding the regulatory network of C. acetobutylicum will be crucial for further engineering to obtain a strain capable of producing n-butanol at high yield and selectivity. This study has discovered that the Cap0037 protein is a novel regulator of C. acetobutylicum that drastically affects metabolism under both acidogenic and alcohologenic fermentation conditions. This is pioneering work for further determining the regulatory mechanism of Cap0037 in C. acetobutylicum and studying the role of proteins homologous to Cap0037 in other members of the phylum Firmicutes.

Project description:UnlabelledEngineering industrial microorganisms for ambitious applications, for example, the production of second-generation biofuels such as butanol, is impeded by a lack of knowledge of primary metabolism and its regulation. A quantitative system-scale analysis was applied to the biofuel-producing bacterium Clostridium acetobutylicum, a microorganism used for the industrial production of solvent. An improved genome-scale model, iCac967, was first developed based on thorough biochemical characterizations of 15 key metabolic enzymes and on extensive literature analysis to acquire accurate fluxomic data. In parallel, quantitative transcriptomic and proteomic analyses were performed to assess the number of mRNA molecules per cell for all genes under acidogenic, solventogenic, and alcohologenic steady-state conditions as well as the number of cytosolic protein molecules per cell for approximately 700 genes under at least one of the three steady-state conditions. A complete fluxomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic analysis applied to different metabolic states allowed us to better understand the regulation of primary metabolism. Moreover, this analysis enabled the functional characterization of numerous enzymes involved in primary metabolism, including (i) the enzymes involved in the two different butanol pathways and their cofactor specificities, (ii) the primary hydrogenase and its redox partner, (iii) the major butyryl coenzyme A (butyryl-CoA) dehydrogenase, and (iv) the major glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase. This study provides important information for further metabolic engineering of C. acetobutylicum to develop a commercial process for the production of n-butanol.ImportanceCurrently, there is a resurgence of interest in Clostridium acetobutylicum, the biocatalyst of the historical Weizmann process, to produce n-butanol for use both as a bulk chemical and as a renewable alternative transportation fuel. To develop a commercial process for the production of n-butanol via a metabolic engineering approach, it is necessary to better characterize both the primary metabolism of C. acetobutylicum and its regulation. Here, we apply a quantitative system-scale analysis to acidogenic, solventogenic, and alcohologenic steady-state C. acetobutylicum cells and report for the first time quantitative transcriptomic, proteomic, and fluxomic data. This approach allows for a better understanding of the regulation of primary metabolism and for the functional characterization of numerous enzymes involved in primary metabolism.

Dataset Information

Hierarchy in pentose sugar metabolism in Clostridium acetobutylicum.

Publications

Hierarchy in pentose sugar metabolism in Clostridium acetobutylicum.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets