Central Metabolic Pathways (central + metabolic_pathway)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Metabolic engineering of the anaerobic central metabolic pathway in Escherichia coli for the simultaneous anaerobic production of isoamyl acetate and succinic acid

BIOTECHNOLOGY PROGRESS, Issue 5 2009
Cheryl R. Dittrich
Abstract An in vivo method of producing isoamyl acetate and succinate simultaneously has been developed in Escherichia coli to maximize yields of both high value compounds as well as maintain the proper redox balance between NADH and NAD+. Previous attempts at producing the ester isoamyl acetate anaerobically did not produce the compound in high concentrations because of competing pathways and the need for NAD+ regeneration. The objective of this study is to produce succinate as an example of a reduced coproduct to balance the ratio of NADH/NAD+ as a way of maximizing isoamyl acetate production. Because the volatility of the two compounds differs greatly, the two could be easily separated in an industrial setting. An ldhA, adhE double mutant strain (SBS110MG) served as the control strain to test the effect of an additional ackA - pta mutation as found in SBS990MG. Both strains overexpressed the two heterologous genes pyruvate carboxylase and alcohol acetyltransferase (for ester production). The triple mutant SBS990MG was found to produce higher levels of both isoamyl acetate and succinate. At the optimal condition of 25°C, the culture produced 9.4 mM isoamyl acetate and 45.5 mM succinate. SBS990MG produced 36% more ester and over 700% more succinate than SBS110MG. In addition, this study demonstrated that a significantly higher isoamyl acetate concentration can be attained by simultaneously balancing the carbon and cofactor flow; the isoamyl acetate concentration of 9.4 mM is more than seven times higher than an earlier report of about 1.2 mM. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 2009 [source]


Complex responses to culture conditions in Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000 continuous cultures: The role of iron in cell growth and virulence factor induction

BIOTECHNOLOGY & BIOENGINEERING, Issue 5 2010
Beum Jun Kim
Abstract The growth of a model plant pathogen, Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000, was investigated using a chemostat culture system to examine environmentally regulated responses. Using minimal medium with iron as the limiting nutrient, four different types of responses were obtained in a customized continuous culture system: (1) stable steady state, (2) damped oscillation, (3) normal washout due to high dilution rates exceeding the maximum growth rate, and (4) washout at low dilution rates due to negative growth rates. The type of response was determined by a combination of initial cell mass and dilution rate. Stable steady states were obtained with dilution rates ranging from 0.059 to 0.086,h,1 with an initial cell mass of less than 0.6,OD600. Damped oscillations and negative growth rates are unusual observations for bacterial systems. We have observed these responses at values of initial cell mass of 0.9,OD600 or higher, or at low dilution rates (<0.05,h,1) irrespectively of initial cell mass. This response suggests complex dynamics including the possibility of multiple steady states. Iron, which was reported earlier as a growth limiting nutrient in a widely used minimal medium, enhances both growth and virulence factor induction in iron-supplemented cultures compared to unsupplemented controls. Intracellular iron concentration is correlated to the early induction (6,h) of virulence factors in both batch and chemostat cultures. A reduction in aconitase activity (a TCA cycle enzyme) and ATP levels in iron-limited chemostat cultures was observed compared to iron-supplemented chemostat cultures, indicating that iron affects central metabolic pathways. We conclude that DC3000 cultures are particularly dependent on the environment and iron is likely a key nutrient in determining physiology. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2010;105: 955,964. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]


Invariability of central metabolic flux distribution in Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 under environmental or genetic perturbations

BIOTECHNOLOGY PROGRESS, Issue 5 2009
Yinjie J. Tang
Abstract An environmentally important bacterium with versatile respiration, Shewanella oneidensis MR-1, displayed significantly different growth rates under three culture conditions: minimal medium (doubling time ,3 h), salt stressed minimal medium (doubling time ,6 h), and minimal medium with amino acid supplementation (doubling time ,1.5 h). 13C-based metabolic flux analysis indicated that fluxes of central metabolic reactions remained relatively constant under the three growth conditions, which is in stark contrast to the reported significant changes in the transcript and metabolite profiles under various growth conditions. Furthermore, 10 transposon mutants of S. oneidensis MR-1 were randomly chosen from a transposon library and their flux distributions through central metabolic pathways were revealed to be identical, even though such mutational processes altered the secondary metabolism, for example, glycine and C1 (5,10-Me-THF) metabolism. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 2009 [source]


Robustness Analysis of the Escherichiacoli Metabolic Network

BIOTECHNOLOGY PROGRESS, Issue 6 2000
Jeremy S. Edwards
Genomic, biochemical, and strain-specific data can be assembled to define an in silico representation of the metabolic network for a select group of single cellular organisms. Flux-balance analysis and phenotypic phase planes derived therefrom have been developed and applied to analyze the metabolic capabilities and characteristics of Escherichia coli K-12. These analyses have shown the existence of seven essential reactions in the central metabolic pathways (glycolysis, pentose phosphate pathway, tricarboxylic acid cycle) for the growth in glucose minimal media. The corresponding seven gene products can be grouped into three categories: (1) pentose phosphate pathway genes, (2) three-carbon glycolytic genes, and (3) tricarboxylic acid cycle genes. Here we develop a procedure that calculates the sensitivity of optimal cellular growth to altered flux levels of these essential gene products. The results indicate that the E. coli metabolic network is robust with respect to the flux levels of these enzymes. The metabolic flux in the transketolase and the tricarboxylic acid cycle reactions can be reduced to 15% and 19%, respectively, of the optimal value without significantly influencing the optimal growth flux. The metabolic network also exhibited robustness with respect to the ribose-5-phosphate isomerase, and the ribose-5-phosephate isomerase flux was reduced to 28% of the optimal value without significantly effecting the optimal growth flux. The metabolic network exhibited limited robustness to the three-carbon glycolytic fluxes both increased and decreased. The development presented another dimension to the use of FBA to study the capabilities of metabolic networks. [source]