Analysis of Escherichia coli strains with linear respiratory chain

SysMO is a European transnational funding and research initiative on "Systems Biology of Microorganisms".

The goal pursued by SysMO was to record and describe the dynamic molecular processes going on in unicellular microorganisms in a comprehensive way and to present these processes in the form of computerized mathematical models.

Systems biology will raise biomedical and biotechnological research to a new quality level and contribute markedly to progress in understanding. Pooling European research ...

"Systems Understanding of Microbial Oxygen responses" (SUMO) investigates how Escherichia coli senses oxygen, or the associated changes in oxidation/reduction balance, via the Fnr and ArcA proteins, how these systems interact with other regulatory systems, and how the redox response of an E. coli population is generated from the responses of single cells. There are five sub-projects to determine system properties and behaviour and three sub-projects to employ different and complementary modelling ...

The electron transport chain of E. coli is branched. Different NAD Dehydrogenases and terminal oxidases are known to be expressed at different oxygen availabilities. By deleting multiple genes mutant strains were constructed that posses a linear electron transport chain. These mutants were investigated in continous bioreactor experiments with limiting glucose and varying oxygen supply.

Mutants with a linear respiratory chain consisting of NADH Dehydrogenase II and one of the terminal oxidases cytochrom bo, cytochrome bd I or cytochrome bd II were growth in chemostats with defined oxygen supply. The amounts of biomass formed and of acetate and formate produced were determined.

Mutant strains with linear electron transport chain were grown in chemostat cultures at different defined aerobiosis levels. Expression of selected genes was determined by Real Time RT-PCR

Mutants with linear respiratory chains were grown under SUMO chemostat conditions at different defined aerobiosis levels. The ArcA phoshorylation state as determined.

by-product formation rates and glucose uptake rates of mutants with linear electron transport chain at different aerobiosis levels

The ArcA phosphorylation state was determined for mutants with linear respiratory chain at defined aerobiosis levels.

Gene expression levels in mutants with linear ETC were determined by RealTime RT-PCR

This file describes how to isolate mRNA from E. coli using the kit from Epicentre, for gene expression analysis via RT-PCR

This document describes the chemostat conditions to run comparable experiments in different bioreactors in different labs.