BioProject

Microbial communities experience continuous environmental changes, among which temperature fluctuations are arguably the most impacting. More...

Microbial communities experience continuous environmental changes, among which temperature fluctuations are arguably the most impacting. This is particularly important considering the ongoing global warming but also simply in the context of seasonal variability of sea-surface temperature. Understanding how microorganisms react at the cellular level will improve our modelling and prediction of possible adaptations of microbial communities to a changing environment. In this work we asked which are the molecular mechanisms through which metabolic homeostasis is maintained in a cold-adapted bacterium during growth at temperatures that differ widely (0 and 15C). We have quantified its intracellular and extracellular metabolomes together with changes occurring at the transcriptomic level in the same growth conditions. This information was then used to contextualize a genome-scale metabolic reconstruction and to provide a systemic understanding of cellular adaptation to growth in a wide range of temperatures. Our findings indicate a strong metabolic robustness at the level of the main central metabolites, counteracted by a relatively deep transcriptomic reprogramming that includes changes in gene expression of hundreds of metabolic genes. We interpret this as a transcriptomic buffering of cellular metabolism, able to produce strikingly similar metabolic phenotypes despite the wide temperature gap. Moreover, we show that metabolic adaptation seems to be mostly played at the level of few key intermediates (e.g. phosphoenolpyruvate) and in the cross-talk between the main central metabolic pathways. Overall, our findings reveal a complex interplay at gene expression/resilience of core metabolism, also promoting the leveraging of state-of-the-art multi-disciplinary approaches to fully comprehend the molecular adaptation that occurs at different temperatures in bacteria. Less...