Comparative studies of Escherichia coli strains using different glucose uptake systems: Metabolism and energetics

Modifying substrate uptake systems is a potentially powerful tool in metabolic engineering. This research investigates energetic and metabolic changes brought about by the genetic modification of the glucose uptake and phosphorylation system of Escherichia coli. The engineered strain PPA316, which lacks the E. coli phosphotransferase system (PTS) and uses instead the galactose-proton symport system for glucose uptake, exhibited significantly altered metabolic patterns relative to the parent strain PPA305 which retains PTS activity. Replacement of a PTS uptake system by the galactose-proton symport system is expected to lower the carbon flux to pyruvate in both aerobic and anaerobic cultivations. The extra energy cost in substrate uptake for the non-PTS strain PPA 316 had a greater effect on anaerobic specific growth rate, which was reduced by a factor of five relative to PPA 305, while PPA 316 reached a specific growth rate of 60% of that of the PTS strain under aerobic conditions. The maximal cell densities obtained with PPA 316 were approximately 8% higher than those of the PTS strain under aerobic conditions and 14% lower under anaerobic conditions. In vivo NMR results showed that the non-PTS strain possesses a dramatically different intracellular environment, as evidenced by lower levels of total sugar phosphate, NAD(H), nucleoside triphosphates and phosphoenolpyruvate, and higher levels of nucleoside diphosphates. The sugar phosphate compositions, as measured by extract NMR, were considerably different between these two strains. Data suggest that limitations in the rates of steps catalyzed by glucokinase, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, phosphofructokinase, and pyruvate kinase may be responsible for the low overall rate of glucose metabolism in PPA316. (c) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Biotechnol Bioeng 56: 583-590, 1997.