Chaperonin Abundance Enhances Bacterial Fitness

C M Santosh Kumar; Kritika Chugh; Anirban Dutta; Vishnuvardhan Mahamkali; Tungadri Bose; Sharmila S Mande; Shekhar C Mande; Peter A Lund

doi:10.3389/fmolb.2021.669996

Chaperonin Abundance Enhances Bacterial Fitness

Front Mol Biosci. 2021 Jul 26:8:669996. doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2021.669996. eCollection 2021.

Authors

C M Santosh Kumar¹, Kritika Chugh², Anirban Dutta³, Vishnuvardhan Mahamkali⁴, Tungadri Bose³, Sharmila S Mande³, Shekhar C Mande⁵, Peter A Lund¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Biosciences and Institute of Microbiology and Infection, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom.
² Department of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, India.
³ TCS Research, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Pune, India.
⁴ Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
⁵ Laboratory of Structural Biology, National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS), Pune, India.

Abstract

The ability of chaperonins to buffer mutations that affect protein folding pathways suggests that their abundance should be evolutionarily advantageous. Here, we investigate the effect of chaperonin overproduction on cellular fitness in Escherichia coli. We demonstrate that chaperonin abundance confers 1) an ability to tolerate higher temperatures, 2) improved cellular fitness, and 3) enhanced folding of metabolic enzymes, which is expected to lead to enhanced energy harvesting potential.

Keywords: GroEL; competitive index; evolution; metabolic flux; metabolism; proteomics.