An optimal regulation of fluxes dictates microbial growth in and out of steady-state

  1. Griffin Chure  Is a corresponding author
  2. Jonas Cremer  Is a corresponding author
  1. Stanford University, United States

Abstract

Effective coordination of cellular processes is critical to ensure the competitive growth of microbial organisms. Pivotal to this coordination is the appropriate partitioning of cellular resources between protein synthesis via translation and the metabolism needed to sustain it. Here, we extend a low-dimensional allocation model to describe the dynamic regulation of this resource partitioning. At the core of this regulation is the optimal coordination of metabolic and translational fluxes, mechanistically achieved via the perception of charged- and uncharged-tRNA turnover. An extensive comparison with ≈ 60 data sets from Escherichia coli establishes this regulatory mechanism's biological veracity and demonstrates that a remarkably wide range of growth phenomena in and out of steady state can be predicted with quantitative accuracy. This predictive power, achieved with only a few biological parameters, cements the preeminent importance of optimal flux regulation across conditions and establishes low-dimensional allocation models as an ideal physiological framework to interrogate the dynamics of growth, competition, and adaptation in complex and ever-changing environments.

Data availability

All data is available via the paper GitHub repository (https://github.com/cremerlab/flux_parity) and is registered in Zenodo via DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5893799

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Griffin Chure

    Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, United States
    For correspondence
    gchure@stanford.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2216-2057
  2. Jonas Cremer

    Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, United States
    For correspondence
    jbcremer@stanford.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-2328-5152

Funding

National Science Foundation (2010807)

  • Griffin Chure

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

© 2023, Chure & Cremer

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.

Metrics

  • 2,187
    views
  • 394
    downloads
  • 26
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Griffin Chure
  2. Jonas Cremer
(2023)
An optimal regulation of fluxes dictates microbial growth in and out of steady-state
eLife 12:e84878.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.84878

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.84878

Further reading

    1. Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Ziyu Wen, Pingchao Li ... Caijun Sun
    Research Article

    The persistence of latent viral reservoirs remains the major obstacle to eradicating human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). We herein found that ICP34.5 can act as an antagonistic factor for the reactivation of HIV latency by herpes simplex virus type I (HSV-1), and thus recombinant HSV-1 with ICP34.5 deletion could more effectively reactivate HIV latency than its wild-type counterpart. Mechanistically, HSV-ΔICP34.5 promoted the phosphorylation of HSF1 by decreasing the recruitment of protein phosphatase 1 (PP1α), thus effectively binding to the HIV LTR to reactivate the latent reservoirs. In addition, HSV-ΔICP34.5 enhanced the phosphorylation of IKKα/β through the degradation of IκBα, leading to p65 accumulation in the nucleus to elicit NF-κB pathway-dependent reactivation of HIV latency. Then, we constructed the recombinant HSV-ΔICP34.5 expressing simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) env, gag, or the fusion antigen sPD1-SIVgag as a therapeutic vaccine, aiming to achieve a functional cure by simultaneously reactivating viral latency and eliciting antigen-specific immune responses. Results showed that these constructs effectively elicited SIV-specific immune responses, reactivated SIV latency, and delayed viral rebound after the interruption of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in chronically SIV-infected rhesus macaques. Collectively, these findings provide insights into the rational design of HSV-vectored therapeutic strategies for pursuing an HIV functional cure.

    1. Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
    2. Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Mai Nguyen, Elda Bauda ... Cecile Morlot
    Research Article

    Teichoic acids (TA) are linear phospho-saccharidic polymers and important constituents of the cell envelope of Gram-positive bacteria, either bound to the peptidoglycan as wall teichoic acids (WTA) or to the membrane as lipoteichoic acids (LTA). The composition of TA varies greatly but the presence of both WTA and LTA is highly conserved, hinting at an underlying fundamental function that is distinct from their specific roles in diverse organisms. We report the observation of a periplasmic space in Streptococcus pneumoniae by cryo-electron microscopy of vitreous sections. The thickness and appearance of this region change upon deletion of genes involved in the attachment of TA, supporting their role in the maintenance of a periplasmic space in Gram-positive bacteria as a possible universal function. Consequences of these mutations were further examined by super-resolved microscopy, following metabolic labeling and fluorophore coupling by click chemistry. This novel labeling method also enabled in-gel analysis of cell fractions. With this approach, we were able to titrate the actual amount of TA per cell and to determine the ratio of WTA to LTA. In addition, we followed the change of TA length during growth phases, and discovered that a mutant devoid of LTA accumulates the membrane-bound polymerized TA precursor.