Quantitative insights into the cyanobacterial cell economy
Abstract
Phototrophic microorganisms are promising resources for green biotechnology. Compared to heterotrophic microorganisms, however, the cellular economy of phototrophic growth is still insufficiently understood. We provide a quantitative analysis of light-limited, light-saturated, and light-inhibited growth of the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 using a reproducible cultivation setup. We report key physiological parameters, including growth rate, cell size, and photosynthetic activity over a wide range of light intensities. Intracellular proteins were quantified to monitor proteome allocation as a function of growth rate. Among other physiological adaptations, we identify an upregulation of the translational machinery and downregulation of light harvesting components with increasing light intensity and growth rate. The resulting growth laws are discussed in the context of a coarse-grained model of phototrophic growth and available data obtained by a comprehensive literature search. Our insights into quantitative aspects of cyanobacterial adaptations to different growth rates have implications to understand and optimize photosynthetic productivity.
Data availability
Proteomics data have been deposited to the ProteomeXchange Consortium under accession code PXD009626.
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Synechocystis sp. proteome on different light conditionsProteomeXchange, PXD009626.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Ministerstvo Školství, Mládeže a Tělovýchovy
- Tomáš Zavřel
- Jan Červený
Grantová Agentura České Republiky
- Tomáš Zavřel
- Jan Červený
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Marjan Faizi
- Gereon Poschmann
- Kai Stühler
Russian Science Foundation
- Maria Sinetova
- Anna Zorina
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
- Ralf Steuer
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2019, Zavřel et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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