The system is publicly available at http://meltdb.cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de.

Abiotic stresses in general and extracellular acidity in particular disturb and limit nitrogen-fixing symbioses between rhizobia and their host legumes. Except for valuable molecular-biological studies on different rhizobia, no consolidated models have been formulated to describe the central physiologic changes that occur in acid-stressed bacteria. We present here an integrated analysis entailing the main cultural, metabolic, and molecular responses of the model bacterium Sinorhizobium meliloti growing under controlled acid stress in a chemostat. A stepwise extracellular acidification of the culture medium had indicated that S. meliloti stopped growing at ca. pH 6.0–6.1. Under such stress the rhizobia increased the O2 consumption per cell by more than 5-fold. This phenotype, together with an increase in the transcripts for several membrane cytochromes, entails a higher aerobic-respiration rate in the acid-stressed rhizobia. Multivariate analysis of global metabolome data served to unequivocally correlate specific-metabolite profiles with the extracellular pH, showing that at low pH the pentose-phosphate pathway exhibited increases in several transcripts, enzymes, and metabolites. Further analyses should be focused on the time course of the observed changes, its associated intracellular signaling, and on the comparison with the changes that operate during the sub lethal acid-adaptive response (ATR) in rhizobia.

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The well-studied plant pathogenic bacterium Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris (Xcc) synthesizes the biotechnologically important polysaccharide xanthan gum, which is also regarded as a virulence factor in plant interactions. In Xcc, sugars like glucose are utilized as a source to generate energy and biomass for growth and pathogenicity. In this study, we used [1-(13)C]glucose as a tracer to analyze the fluxes in the central metabolism of the bacterium growing in a minimal medium. (13)C-Metabolic flux analysis based on gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) confirmed the prevalent catabolic role of the Entner-Doudoroff pathway. Comparative nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based isotopologue profiling of a mutant deficient in glycolysis gave evidence for a moderate flux via glycolysis in the wild-type. In addition to reconfirming the Entner-Doudoroff pathway as a catabolic main route, this approach affirmed a numerically minor but important flux via the pentose phosphate pathway.

No abstract