Protein and mRNA levels support the notion that a genetic regulatory circuit controls growth phases in E. coli populations
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Microbiology, Synthetic Biology
- Keywords
- regulatory circuit, Growth phase, proteome, bacteria, mRNA
- Copyright
- © 2015 Martínez-Antonio
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2015. Protein and mRNA levels support the notion that a genetic regulatory circuit controls growth phases in E. coli populations. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e866v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.866v1
Abstract
Bacterial populations transition between growing and non-growing phases, based on nutrient availability and stress conditions. The hallmark of a growing state is anabolism, including DNA replication and cell division. In contrast, bacteria in a growth-arrested state acquire a resistant physiology and diminished metabolism. However, there is little knowledge on how this transition occurs at the molecular level. Here, we provide new evidence that a multi-element genetic regulatory circuit might work to maintain genetic control among growth-phase transitions in Escherichia coli. This work contributes to the discovering of design principles behind the performance of biological functions, which could be of relevance on the new disciplines of biological engineering and synthetic biology.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.