Proteomic profiling of the carbon-starved Escherichia coli reveals upregulation of stress-inducible pathways implicated in biological adhesion and methylglyoxal metabolism

Abstract

Starvation in bacteria is a complex adaptive response to deprivation of nutrients that has been shown to implicate a number of stress networks that modulate pathogenicity and antibiotic resistance. Starvation in nature is qualitatively different from in-culture late stationary phase energy source depletion. To look into proteome-level alterations elicited by complete elimination of carbon source, we used Escherichia coli HT115-derived SLE1 strain cells and a combination of label-free and metabolic isotope labeling approaches. We isolated pathways differentially affected by carbon starvation and observed robust upregulation of proteins implicated in networks belonging to Gene Ontology terms 'Biological adhesion' and 'Methylglyoxal metabolic process'.

Keywords: Bacterial adhesion; Escherichia coli; Mass spectrometry; Proteomics; Pyruvaldehyde (methylglyoxal); Starvation.