Project description:The pyruvate dehydrogenase regulator protein (PdhR) of Escherichia coli acts as a transcriptional regulator in a pyruvate dependent manner to control central metabolic fluxes. However, the complete PdhR regulon has not yet been uncovered. To achieve an extended understanding of its gene regulation network, we combined large-scale network inference and experimental verification of results obtained by a systems biology approach. We determined the gene expression of four different strains of E. coli on three different media. The four strains corresponded to the wild-type E. coli (LJ110), a PdhR knockout mutant (LJ110deltapdhR), a strain carrying an empty plasmid (LJ110/pTM30) and a PdhR overexpression strain (LJ110/pTM30PdhRhis). These strains were cultivated on Luria-Bertani broth (LBo), standard phosphate minimal medium supplemented with acetate and standard phosphate minimal medium supplemented with pyruvate. We obtained an overall 24 microarray experiments from two replicates of each of these cultivations.
Project description:The pyruvate dehydrogenase regulator protein (PdhR) of Escherichia coli acts as a transcriptional regulator in a pyruvate dependent manner to control central metabolic fluxes. However, the complete PdhR regulon has not yet been uncovered. To achieve an extended understanding of its gene regulation network, we combined large-scale network inference and experimental verification of results obtained by a systems biology approach.
Project description:We have performed adaptive laboratory evolution of E. coli pdhR gene deletion strain to examine the adaptive strategies of E. coli.
Project description:Microbes able to convert gaseous one-carbon (C1) waste feedstocks are increasingly important to transition to the sustainable production of renewable chemicals and fuels. Acetogens are interesting biocatalysts since gas fermentation using Clostridium autoethanogenum has been commercialised. However, most acetogen strains need complex nutrients, display slow growth, and are not robust for bioreactor fermentations. In this work, we used three different and independent adaptive laboratory evolution (ALE) strategies to evolve the wild-type C. autoethanogenum to grow faster, without yeast extract and to be robust in operating continuous bioreactor cultures. Multiple evolved strains with improved phenotypes were isolated on minimal media with one strain, named “LAbrini”, exhibiting superior performance regarding the maximum specific growth rate, product profile, and robustness in continuous cultures. Whole-genome sequencing of the evolved strains identified 25 mutations. Of particular interest are two genes that acquired seven different mutations across the three ALE strategies, potentially as a result of convergent evolution. Reverse genetic engineering of mutations in potentially sporulation-related genes CLAU_3129 (spo0A) and CLAU_1957 recovered all three superior features of our ALE strains through triggering significant proteomic rearrangements. This work provides a robust C. autoethanogenum strain “LAbrini” to accelerate phenotyping and genetic engineering and to better understand acetogen metabolism.