Proteome reallocation in Escherichia coli with increasing specific growth rate

Cells usually respond to changing growth conditions with a change in the specific growth rate (μ) and adjustment of their proteome to adapt and maintain metabolic efficiency. Description of the principles behind proteome resource allocation is important for understanding metabolic regulation in response to changing μ. Thus, we analysed the proteome resource allocation dynamics of Escherichia coli into different metabolic processes in response to changing μ. E. coli was grown on minimal and defined rich media in steady state continuous cultures at different μ and characterised combining two LC-MS/MS-based proteomics methods: stable isotope labelling by amino acids in cell culture (SILAC) and intensity based label-free absolute quantification. We detected slowly growing cells investing more proteome resources in energy generation and carbohydrate transport and metabolism whereas for achieving faster growth cells needed to devote most resources to translation and processes closely related to the protein synthesis pipeline. Furthermore, down-regulation of energy generation and carbohydrate metabolism proteins with faster growth displayed very similar expression dynamics with the global transcriptional regulator CRP (cyclic AMP receptor protein), pointing to a dominant protein resource allocating role of this protein. Our data also suggest that acetate overflow may be the result of global proteome resource optimisation as cells saved proteome resources by switching from fully respiratory to respiro-fermentative growth. The presented results give a quantitative overview of how E. coli adjusts its proteome to achieve faster growth and in future could contribute to the design of more efficient cell factories through proteome optimisation.