Controlling Yeast Fitness Tradeoffs in Nitrogen Metabolism
Author Information
Author(s): Travis S Bayer, Kevin G Hoff, Chase L Beisel, Jack J Lee, Christina D Smolke
Primary Institution: California Institute of Technology
Hypothesis
Can synthetic control of an endogenous circuit regulate the tradeoff between fitness in resource abundant and resource limited environments in yeast?
Conclusion
The ability to tune fitness and biological tradeoffs will be important components of future efforts to engineer microbial communities.
Supporting Evidence
- The study found that noise in Gdh1p expression mediates a tradeoff between growth in low nitrogen environments and stress resistance in high ammonia environments.
- Engineered strains with different Gdh1p expression variability displayed different fitness levels under varying ammonia concentrations.
- Synthetic control of the Gdh1p regulatory network allowed for tunable fitness tradeoffs in yeast.
Takeaway
Scientists figured out how to help yeast grow better in different amounts of nitrogen by changing how they control a specific enzyme.
Methodology
The study involved engineering yeast strains to manipulate the expression of the Gdh1p enzyme and measuring their fitness under varying ammonia concentrations.
Limitations
The study does not demonstrate a mechanism for stress resistance and fitness effects.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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