Metabolome analysis: phenol vs D-glucose

e:Bio - Innovations Competition Systems Biology

Within the e:Bio - Innovationswettbewerb Systembiologie (Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)), the SulfoSYSBIOTECH consortium (10 partners), aim to unravel the complexity and regulation of the carbon metabolic network of the thermoacidophilic archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus (optimal growth at 80°C and pH 3) in order to provide new catalysts ‘extremozymes’ for utilization in White Biotechnology.

Based on the available S. solfataricus genome scale metabolic model (Ulas et al., 2012) ...

Present in many industrial effluents and as intermediate of lignin degradation, phenol is a widespread pollutant causing serious environmental problems, due to its toxicity to animals and humans. Removal of phenol from the environment by bacteria has been studied extensively over the past decades, but only little is known about phenol biodegradation in hostile environments. We combined metabolomics and transcriptomics together with metabolic modelling to elucidate the organism’s response to growth ...

To investigate phenol degradation in Saccharolobus solfataricus transcriptome and metabolome analyses were performed with cells grown on phenol as sole carbon source. Cells grown on D-glucose served as reference. Metabolic modelling was used to compare efficiency of phenol utilization in terms of oxygen demand and energy yield with the reference condition.