Growth efficiency and regulation of key enzyme activities were studied in carbon- and energy-limited chemostat cultures of Saccharomyces cerevisiae grown on mixtures of glucose and ethanol at a fixed dilution rate. Biomass yields on substrate carbon and oxygen could be adequately described as the net result of growth on the single substrates. Activities of isocitrate lyase and malate synthase were not detected in cell-free extracts of glucose-limited cultures. However, both enzymes were present when the ethanol fraction in the reservoir medium exceeded the theoretical minimum above which the glyoxylate cycle is required for anabolic reactions. Fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase activity was only detectable at high ethanol fractions in the feed, when activity of this enzyme was required for synthesis of hexose phosphates. Phospho-enol-pyruvate-carboxykinase activity was not detectable in extracts from glucose-grown cultures and increased with the ethanol fraction in the feed. It is concluded that, during carbon-limited growth of S. cerevisiae on mixtures of glucose and ethanol, biosynthetic intermediates with three or more carbon atoms are preferentially synthesized from glucose. Synthesis of the key enzymes of gluconeogenesis and the glyoxylate cycle is adapted to the cells' requirement for these intermediates. The gluconeogenic enzymes and their physiological antagonists (pyruvate kinase, pyruvate carboxylase and phosphofructokinase) were expressed simultaneously at high ethanol fractions in the feed. If futile cycling is prevented under these conditions, this is not primarily achieved by tight control of enzyme synthesis.
Setting up a metabolic network model for respiratory growth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae requires the estimation of only two (energetic) stoichiometric parameters: (1) the operational PO ratio and (2) a growth-related maintenance factor k. It is shown, both theoretically and practically, how chemostat cultivations with different mixtures of two substrates allow unique values to be given to these unknowns of the proposed metabolic model. For the yeast and model considered, an effective PO ratio of 1.09 mol of ATP/mol of O (95% confidence interval 1.07-1.11) and a k factor of 0.415 mol of ATP/C-mol of biomass (0.385-0.445) were obtained from biomass substrate yield data on glucose/ethanol mixtures. Symbolic manipulation software proved very valuable in this study as it supported the proof of theoretical identifiability and significantly reduced the necessary computations for parameter estimation. In the transition from 100% glucose to 100% ethanol in the feed, four metabolic regimes occur. Switching between these regimes is determined by cessation of an irreversible reaction and initiation of an alternative reaction. Metabolic network predictions of these metabolic switches compared well with activity measurements of key enzymes. As a second validation of the network, the biomass yield of S. cerevisiae on acetate was also compared to the network prediction. An excellent agreement was found for a network in which acetate transport was modeled with a proton symport, while passive diffusion of acetate gave significantly higher yield predictions.
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