A metabolic view of the bacterial cell cycle
Cell cycle progression is a fundamental metabolic challenge. In a Nature Metabolism paper, the Vorholt lab determined how different cell cycle stages impact metabolism, and how glutathione deficiency perturbs cell division in a bacterium.
A functional cell division cycle requires coordinating growth with cellular metabolism. Moreover, metabolic resources must be allocated to provide the changing nutritional need at different cell-cycle stages. Using a mass spectrometry based metabolomics approach, a team led by the Vorholt lab now determined the effect of cell cycle progression on hundreds of metabolites in the bacterium Caulobacter crescentus (Hartl et al, Nature Metabolism). They find that this bacterium effectively adjusts its metabolism to fuel cell cycle and differentiation processes. Only a discrete subset of metabolites show striking cell-cycle dependent fluctuations and may help to transmit the metabolic status to the cell cycle machinery. They further describe how deficiency of glutathione, one of these fluctuating metabolites, leads to activation of a potassium efflux system, which uncouples cellular growth from normal cell division.
Link to the publication in external page Nature Metabolism.