title: Metabolic costs of amino acid and protein production in Escherichia coli.
abstract: Escherichia coli is the most popular microorganism for the production of recombinant proteins and is gaining increasing importance for the production of low-molecular weight compounds such as amino acids. The metabolic cost associated with the production of amino acids and (recombinant) proteins from glucose, glycerol and acetate was determined using three different computational techniques to identify those amino acids that put the highest burden on the biosynthetic machinery of E. coli. Comparing the costs of individual amino acids, we find that methionine is the most expensive amino acid in terms of consumed mol of ATP per molecule produced, while leucine is the most expensive amino acid when taking into account the cellular abundances of amino acids. Moreover, we show that the biosynthesis of a large number of amino acids from glucose and particularly from glycerol provides a surplus of energy, which can be used to balance the high energetic cost of amino acid polymerization.
authors.affiliation: Research Group Theoretical Systems Biology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany. Christoph.Kaleta@uni-jena.de.
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kaleta
authors.forename: Sascha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Schäuble
authors.forename: Ursula
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Rinas
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Schuster
mesh_terms: D000255:Adenosine Triphosphate / Q000378:metabolism*; D000596:Amino Acids / Q000096:biosynthesis*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000378:metabolism*; D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins / Q000096:biosynthesis*; D016680:Genome, Bacterial; D005947:Glucose / Q000378:metabolism; D005990:Glycerol / Q000378:metabolism; D007930:Leucine / Q000378:metabolism*; D008715:Methionine / Q000378:metabolism*; D008954:Models, Biological; D058105:Polymerization; D011994:Recombinant Proteins / Q000096:biosynthesis / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D000596:Amino Acids; D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins; D011994:Recombinant Proteins; D000255:Adenosine Triphosphate; D008715:Methionine; D007930:Leucine; D005947:Glucose; D005990:Glycerol
keywords: Amino acid biosynthetic cost; Amino acid production; Escherichia coli metabolism; Protein production cost; Recombinant proteins