title: Carbon backbone topology of the metabolome of a cell.
abstract: The complex metabolic makeup of a biological system, such as a cell, is a key determinant of its biological state providing unique insights into its function. Here we characterize the metabolome of a cell by a novel homonuclear (13)C 2D NMR approach applied to a nonfractionated uniformly (13)C-enriched lysate of E. coli cells and determine de novo their carbon backbone topologies that constitute the "topolome". A protocol was developed, which first identifies traces in a constant-time (13)C-(13)C TOCSY NMR spectrum that are unique for individual mixture components and then assembles for each trace the corresponding carbon-bond topology network by consensus clustering. This led to the determination of 112 topologies of unique metabolites from a single sample. The topolome is dominated by carbon topologies of carbohydrates (34.8%) and amino acids (45.5%) that can constitute building blocks of more complex structures.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Molecular Biophysics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306, USA.
authors.forename: Kerem
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Bingol
authors.forename: Fengli
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bruschweiler-Li
authors.forename: Rafael
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Brüschweiler
mesh_terms: D002244:Carbon; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000166:cytology* / Q000378:metabolism*; D009682:Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy / Q000379:methods*; D055432:Metabolomics / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D002244:Carbon