Structuring Microbial Metabolic Responses to Multiplexed Stimuli via Self-Organizing Metabolomics Maps

Area of Science:

• Microbiology
• Metabolomics
• Systems Biology

Background:

• Microbial secondary metabolite biosynthesis is complex and influenced by various stimuli.
• Identifying these responses comprehensively is challenging using traditional methods.
• Understanding microbial responses is crucial for discovering new bioactive compounds.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and apply a method for untargeted identification of microbial metabolic responses to multiplexed stimuli.
• To characterize the dynamic changes in primary and secondary metabolites of Streptomyces coelicolor under various conditions.
• To investigate how metabolites encode phenotypic changes in response to environmental challenges.

Main Methods:

• Application of multiplexed chemical and biological stimuli to Streptomyces coelicolor cultures.
• Metabolomic profiling using ion mobility-mass spectrometry.
• Analysis of metabolomic data with self-organizing map (SOM) analytics.

Main Results:

• Over 60% of metabolic features were either novel or significantly increased under stimulus conditions.
• Self-organizing map analytics effectively characterized metabolite subsets with similar response patterns.
• 16 known secondary metabolites were identified with increased abundance (1.2- to 22-fold) under specific challenge conditions.

Conclusions:

• Multiplexed stimuli reveal a broad spectrum of metabolic responses in Streptomyces coelicolor.
• SOM analytics provide an efficient approach for analyzing complex metabolomic data.
• This approach enhances the discovery of microbial secondary metabolites and their regulatory mechanisms.