Optimality and sub-optimality in a bacterial growth law.
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BORIS DOI
Date of Publication
January 19, 2017
Publication Type
Article
Division/Institute
Author
Korem, Yael | |
Bren, Anat | |
Doron, Shany | |
Sorek, Rotem | |
Alon, Uri |
Subject(s)
Series
Nature Communications
ISSN or ISBN (if monograph)
2041-1723
Publisher
Springer Nature
Language
English
Publisher DOI
PubMed ID
28102224
Description
Organisms adjust their gene expression to improve fitness in diverse environments. But finding the optimal expression in each environment presents a challenge. We ask how good cells are at finding such optima by studying the control of carbon catabolism genes in Escherichia coli. Bacteria show a growth law: growth rate on different carbon sources declines linearly with the steady-state expression of carbon catabolic genes. We experimentally modulate gene expression to ask if this growth law always maximizes growth rate, as has been suggested by theory. We find that the growth law is optimal in many conditions, including a range of perturbations to lactose uptake, but provides sub-optimal growth on several other carbon sources. Combining theory and experiment, we genetically re-engineer E. coli to make sub-optimal conditions into optimal ones and vice versa. We conclude that the carbon growth law is not always optimal, but represents a practical heuristic that often works but sometimes fails.
File(s)
File | File Type | Format | Size | License | Publisher/Copright statement | Content | |
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ncomms14123.pdf | text | Adobe PDF | 640.82 KB | Attribution (CC BY 4.0) | published |