A new minimal medium for enterobacteria has been developed. It supports growth of Escherichia coli and Salmonella typhimurium at rates comparable to those of any of the traditional media that have high phosphate concentrations, but each of the macronutrients (phosphate, sulfate, and nitrogen) is present at a sufficiently low level to permit isotopic labeling. Buffering capacity is provided by an organic dipolar ion, morpholinopropane sulfonate, which has a desirable pK (7.2) and no apparent inhibitory effect on growth. The medium has been developed with the objectives of (i) providing reproducibility of chemical composition, (ii) meeting the experimentally determined nutritional needs of the cell, (iii) avoiding an unnecessary excess of the major ionic species, (iv) facilitating the adjustment of the levels of individual ionic species, both for isotopic labeling and for nutritional studies, (v) supplying a complete array of micronutrients, (vi) setting a particular ion as the crop-limiting factor when the carbon and energy source is in excess, and (vii) providing maximal convenience in the manufacture and storage of the medium.

Culture Medium for Enterobacteria

Warburg's observation that cancer cells exhibit a high rate of glycolysis even in the presence of oxygen (aerobic glycolysis) sparked debate over the role of glycolysis in normal and cancer cells. Although it has been established that defects in mitochondrial respiration are not the cause of cancer or aerobic glycolysis, the advantages of enhanced glycolysis in cancer remain controversial. Many cells ranging from microbes to lymphocytes use aerobic glycolysis during rapid proliferation, which suggests it may play a fundamental role in supporting cell growth. Here, we review how glycolysis contributes to the metabolic processes of dividing cells. We provide a detailed accounting of the biosynthetic requirements to construct a new cell and illustrate the importance of glycolysis in providing carbons to generate biomass. We argue that the major function of aerobic glycolysis is to maintain high levels of glycolytic intermediates to support anabolic reactions in cells, thus providing an explanation for why in...

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Aerobic Glycolysis: Meeting the Metabolic Requirements of Cell Proliferation

Calorie restriction extends life-span in a wide variety of organisms. Although it has been suggested that calorie restriction may work by reducing the levels of reactive oxygen species produced during respiration, the mechanism by which this regimen slows aging is uncertain. Here, we mimicked calorie restriction in yeast by physiological or genetic means and showed a substantial extension in life-span. This extension was not observed in strains mutant for SIR2 (which encodes the silencing protein Sir2p) or NPT1 (a gene in a pathway in the synthesis of NAD, the oxidized form of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide). These findings suggest that the increased longevity induced by calorie restriction requires the activation of Sir2p by NAD.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/289/5487/2126.full.pdf

Requirement of NAD and SIR2 for Life-Span Extension by Calorie Restriction in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Phosphoenolpyruvate:carbohydrate phosphotransferase systems of bacteria.

Mechanism of assembly of the outer membrane of Salmonella typhimurium. Isolation and characterization of cytoplasmic and outer membrane.

Uptake of glucose, fructose, and the nonmetabolizable analog 6-deoxyglucose was measured in wild-type Saccharomyces cerevisiae and two mutant strains, one (hxk1 hxk2) lacking both hexokinase A(P-I) and B(P-II) but containing glucokinase (and hence able to grow on glucose but not fructose) and the other (hxk1 hxk2 glk) also lacking glucokinase (and not able to grow on glucose either). Uptake of the nonmetabolized substances (i.e., 6-deoxyglucose in all three strains, fructose in the two mutants, and glucose in the triple mutant) reached a plateau at or below the external concentration. The kinetic characteristics of uptake were determined from 5-sec incubations by plotting velocity (V) vs. velocity/substrate concentration (V/S) curves. According to such plots, in the wild-type strain uptake had two components, "high affinity uptake" with Km values of ca. 1 mM for glucose and 6 mM for fructose and "low affinity uptake" with Km values of ca. 20 and 50 mM, respectively. The double kinase mutant showed both components for glucose but only the high Km component for fructose, while the triple kinase mutant showed only high Km uptake for both glucose and fructose. Genetic analysis showed that only in strains lacking both hexokinases (hxk1 hxk2) was the low Km system for fructose absent. Low Km uptake was restored to the triple mutant by introduction of the cloned wild-type genes: HXK1 or HXK2, for fructose uptake, and HXK1, HXK2, or GLK1, for glucose uptake. A phosphoglucose isomerase mutant had both low and high Km uptake for glucose. These results indicate the presence of two types of uptake mechanism for glucose and fructose in yeast, the functioning of one of which, the low Km system, is influenced by the cognate kinases.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/80/6/1730.full.pdf

Involvement of kinases in glucose and fructose uptake by Saccharomyces cerevisiae

A single gene mutant lacking phosphoglucose isomerase (pgi) was selected after ethyl methane sulfonate mutagenesis of Escherichia coli strain K-10. Enzyme assays revealed no pgi activity in the mutant, whereas levels of glucokinase, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase, and gluconate-6-phosphate dehydrogenase were similar in parent and mutant. The amount of glucose released by acid hydrolysis of the mutant cells after growth on gluconate was less than 2% that released from parent cells; when grown in the presence of glucose, mutant and parent cells contained the same amount of glucose residues. The mutant grew on glucose one-third as fast as the parent; it also grew much slower than the parent on galactose, maltose, and lactose. On fructose, gluconate, and other carbon sources, growth was almost normal. In both parent and mutant, gluconokinase and gluconate-6-phosphate dehydrase were present during growth on gluconate but not during growth on glucose. Assay and degradation of alanine from protein hydrolysates after growth on glucose-1-14C and gluconate-1-14C showed that in the parent strain glucose was metabolized by the glycolytic path and the hexose monophosphate shunt. Gluconate was metabolized by the Entner-Doudoroff path and the hexose monophosphate shunt. The mutant used glucose chiefly by the shunt, but may also have used the Entner-Doudoroff path to a limited extent.

Glucose and Gluconate Metabolism in an Escherichia coli Mutant Lacking Phosphoglucose Isomerase

Mutants have been isolated in S. cerevisiae with the phenotype of growth on pyruvate but not on glucose, or growth on rich medium with pyruvate but inhibition by glucose. Screening of mutagenized cultures was either without an enrichment step, or after enrichment using the antibiotic netropsin (Young et al. 1976) or inositol starvation ( Henry, Donahue and Culbertson 1975). One class of mutants lacked pyruvate kinase (pyk), another class had all the enzymes of glycolysis, and one mutant lacked phosphoglucose isomerase (pgi, Maitra 1971). Partial reversion of pyruvate kinase mutants on rich medium containing glucose gave double mutants now also lacking hexokinase (hxk ), phosphofructokinase (pfk), or several enzymes of glycolysis (gcr). In diploids the mutations were recessive. pyk, pgi, pfk , and gcr segregated 2:2 from their wild-type alleles. PYK hxk, PYK pfk, and PYK gcr segregants grew on glucose.

https://www.genetics.org/content/genetics/88/1/1.full.pdf

Glycolysis mutants in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

A mutant of Rhizobium meliloti selected as unable to grow on L-arabinose also failed to grow on acetate or pyruvate. It grew, but slower than the parental strain, on many other carbon sources. Assay showed it to lack alpha-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase (kgd) activity, and revertants of normal growth phenotype contained the activity again. Other enzymes of the tricarboxylic acid cycle and of the glyoxylate cycle were present in both mutant and parent strains. Enzymes of pyruvate metabolism were also assayed. L-Arabinose degradation in R. meliloti was found to differ from the known pathway in R. japonicum, since the former strain lacked 2-keto-o-deoxy-L-arabonate aldolase but contained alpha-ketoglutarate semialdehyde dehydrogenase; thus, it is likely that R. meliloti has the L-arabinose pathway leading to alpha-ketoglutarate rather than the one to glycolaldehyde and pyruvate. This finding accounts for the L-arabinose negativity of the mutant. Resting cells of the mutant were able to metabolize the three substrates which did not allow growth.

alpha-Ketoglutarate dehydrogenase mutant of Rhizobium meliloti.

There are both low- and high-affinity mechanisms for uptake of glucose in Saccharomyces cerevisiae; high-affinity uptake somehow depends on the presence of hexose kinases (L. F. Bisson and D. G. Fraenkel, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 80:1730-1734, 1983; L. F. Bisson and D. G. Fraenkel, J. Bacteriol. 155:995-1000, 1983). We report here on the effect of culture conditions on the level of high-affinity uptake. The high-affinity component was low during growth in high concentrations of glucose (100 mM), increased as glucose was exhausted from the medium, and decreased again during prolonged incubation in the stationary phase. The higher level of uptake was found in growth on low concentrations of glucose (0.5 mM) and in growth on normal concentrations of galactose, lactate plus glycerol, or ethanol. These results suggest that some component of high-affinity uptake is repressible by glucose. A shift from medium with 100 mM glucose to medium with 5 mM glucose resulted in up to a 10-fold increase in the level of high-affinity uptake within 90 min; the increase did not occur in the presence of cycloheximide or 2,4-dinitrophenol or in buffer alone with low glucose, suggesting that protein synthesis or energy metabolism (or both) was required. Reimposition of the high glucose concentration caused loss of high-affinity uptake, a process not prevented by cycloheximide. The use of hexokinase single-gene mutants showed that the derepression of high-affinity uptake was not clearly correlated with changes in levels of the kinases themselves. These results place the phenomenon of high- and low-affinity uptake in a physiological context, in that high-affinity uptake seems to be expressed best in conditions where it might be needed. Apparent similarities between glucose uptake in yeast and animal cells are noted.

Dan G. Fraenkel

Papers

Involvement of kinases in glucose and fructose uptake by Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Glucose and Gluconate Metabolism in an Escherichia coli Mutant Lacking Phosphoglucose Isomerase

Glycolysis mutants in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

alpha-Ketoglutarate dehydrogenase mutant of Rhizobium meliloti.

Expression of kinase-dependent glucose uptake in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.