GSE133849
Comparative analysis of global gene expression profiles of Bacillus methanolicus MGA3 during growth with arabitol or mannitol
Bacillus methanolicus is a Gram-positive, thermophilic, methanol-utilizing bacterium. As a facultative methylotroph, B. methanolicus is also known to utilize d-mannitol, d-glucose and, as recently discovered, sugar alcohol d-arabitol. While metabolic pathways for utilization of methanol, mannitol and glucose are known, catabolism of arabitol has not yet been characterized in B. methanolicus. In this work we present the elucidation of this hitherto uncharted pathway. In order to confirm our predictions regarding genes coding for arabitol utilization, we performed differential gene expression analysis of B. methanolicus MGA3 cells grown on arabitol as compared to mannitol via transcriptome sequencing (RNA-seq). We identified a gene cluster comprising eight genes that was up-regulated during growth with arabitol as a sole carbon source. The RNA-seq results were subsequently confirmed via qRT-PCR experiments. The transcriptional organization of the gene cluster identified via RNA-seq was analyzed and it was shown that the arabitol utilization genes are co-transcribed in an operon that spans from BMMGA3_RS07325 to BMMGA3_RS07365. Overall design: Differential gene expression analysis of B. methanolicus MGA3 cultivated with either 15 mM mannitol (control condition) or 15 mM arabitol (test condition) as sole carbon source was performed by RNA-seq. Both conditions were cultivated in biological triplicates previous to cell harvest and sampling.