The effect of initial pH on bacterial cell-growth and its change over time was studied under aerobic heterotrophic conditions by using three bacterial strains: Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, Pseudomonas putida KT2440, and Pseudomonas pseudoalcaligenes CECT 5344. In Luria-Bertani (LB) media, pH evolved by converging to a certain value that is specific for each bacterium. By contrast, in the buffered Minimal Medium (MM), pH was generally more stable along the growth curve. In MM with glucose as carbon source, a slight acidification of the medium was observed for all strains. In the case of E. coli, a sudden drop in pH was observed during exponential cell growth that was later recovered at initial pH 7 or 8, but was irreversible below pH 6, thus arresting further cell-growth. When using other carbon sources in MM at a fixed initial pH, pH changes depended mainly on the carbon source itself. While glucose, glycerol, or octanoate slightly decreased extracellular pH, more oxidized carbon sources, such as citrate, 2-furoate, 2-oxoglutarate, and fumarate, ended up with the alkalinization of the medium. These observations are in accordance with pH change predictions using genome-scale metabolic models for the three strains, thus revealing the metabolic reasons behind pH change. Therefore, we conclude that the composition of the medium, specifically the carbon source, determines pH change during bacterial growth to a great extent and unravel the main molecular mechanism behind this phenotype. These findings pave the way for predicting pH changes in a given bacterial culture and may anticipate the interspecies interactions and fitness of bacteria in their environment.
Keywords: biotechnology; microbial ecology; pH homeostasis; systems biology.