Revealing the Metabolic Alterations during Biofilm Development of Burkholderia cenocepacia Based on Genome-Scale Metabolic Modeling
Journal article, 2021

Burkholderia cenocepacia is among the important pathogens isolated from cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. It has attracted considerable attention because of its capacity to evade host immune defenses during chronic infection. Advances in systems biology methodologies have led to the emergence of methods that integrate experimental transcriptomics data and genome-scale metabolic models (GEMs). Here, we integrated transcriptomics data of bacterial cells grown on exponential and biofilm conditions into a manually curated GEM of B. cenocepacia. We observed substantial differences in pathway response to different growth conditions and alternative pathway susceptibility to extracellular nutrient availability. For instance, we found that blockage of the reactions was vital through the lipid biosynthesis pathways in the exponential phase and the absence of microenvironmental lysine and tryptophan are essential for survival. During biofilm development, bacteria mostly had conserved lipid metabolism but altered pathway activities associated with several amino acids and pentose phosphate pathways. Furthermore, conversion of serine to pyruvate and 2,5-dioxopentanoate synthesis are also identified as potential targets for metabolic remodeling during biofilm development. Altogether, our integrative systems biology analysis revealed the interactions between the bacteria and its microenvironment and enabled the discovery of antimicrobial targets for biofilm-related diseases.

omics integration

Burkholderia cenocepacia

genome-scale metabolic models

synthetic lethality

transcriptomics

biofilm

Author

Ozlem Altay

Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)

King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences

Cheng Zhang

Zhengzhou University

Hasan Turkez

Atatürk University

Jens B Nielsen

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Systems and Synthetic Biology

Mathias Uhlen

Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)

Adil Mardinoglu

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Systems and Synthetic Biology

Metabolites

2218-1989 (ISSN) 22181989 (eISSN)

Vol. 11 4 221

Subject Categories

Microbiology

Medical Biotechnology (with a focus on Cell Biology (including Stem Cell Biology), Molecular Biology, Microbiology, Biochemistry or Biopharmacy)

Microbiology in the medical area

DOI

10.3390/metabo11040221

PubMed

33916474

More information

Latest update

5/17/2021