Proteomic tracking of bacterial communities

Proteomic tracking of bacterial communities

Motivation

Microbial interactions impact growth behavior of the individual species within a bacterial community and their susceptibilities to environmental factors. To obtain a better understanding on microorganisms and their complex individuals networks analytical approaches on different molecular levels (genome, transcriptome, proteome and metabolome) have to be pursued. As the proteome gives valuable information on functional level, qualitative and quantitative proteomics is a powerful tool to get insights into such complex and dynamic systems.

Aim of the project

A method for proteomic tracking is developed to monitor the population dynamics and species interaction within microbial mixed cultures. I.e., the developed method enables detection of differentially expressed proteins (giving insights into microbial interactions within such mixed cultures) as well as monitoring the species-specific biomass composition. This was exemplarily demonstrated on a mucoviscidosis relevant bacterial mixed culture [1].
This proteomics based strategy, allowing for fundamental insights into structure and function of multi-species microbial communities, can also be applied with respect to ecological and evolutionary questions. Within a joint project with Dr. Kost at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, the proteomes of both naturally-evolved and synthetically-engineered E. coli mutants are analyzed to investigate growth phenotypes and fitness differences that have been observed in co-culture experiments.

References

Kluge, S.; Hoffmann, M.; Benndorf, D.; Rapp, E.; Reichl, U.: Proteomic tracking and analysis of a bacterial mixed culture. Proteomics 12 (12), pp. 1893 - 1901 (2012)

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