Speaker
Enzo Marinari
Description
Living cells react to changes in growth conditions by re-shaping their
proteome. This accounts for different stress-response strategies, both
specific (i.e., aimed at increasing the availability of stress mitigating
proteins) and systemic (such as large-scale changes in the use of
metabolic pathways aimed at a more efficient exploitation of
resources). Proteome re-allocation can, however, imply significant bio-
synthetic costs. Whether and how such costs impact the growth
performance are largely open problems. Focusing on carbon-limited
E. coli growth, we integrate genome-scale modeling and proteomic
data to address these questions at a quantitative level. It turns out
that optimal growth results from the tradeoff between yield
maximization and protein burden minimization. Empirical data confirm
that E. coli growth is close to Pareto-optimal over a broad range of
growth rates. Our findings provide a quantitative perspective on carbon
overflow, the origin of growth laws and the multidimensional optimality
of E. coli metabolism.
Primary author
Enzo Marinari
