E. coli prepares for starvation by dramatically remodeling its proteome in the first hours after loss of nutrients

ABSTRACT: Although in the wild bacteria likely spend most of their time deprived of nutrients and slowly starving to death, very little is known about how bacteria adapt their phenotype to starvation. Here we combine microfluidics with quantitative fluorescence microscopy of transcriptional reporters to comprehensively quantify growth and gene expression at the single-cell level in E. coli during carbon starvation. We find that all cells immediately stop growing upon loss of carbon source and that almost all remain alive for over 30 hours. Furthermore, entry into starvation triggers a dynamic expression program that is remarkably homogeneous across single cells, but highly variable across genes, causing dramatic remodeling of the proteome early in starvation. We further show that, as protein product

SUBMITTER: Théo Gervais 

PROVIDER: S-SCDT-10_1038-S44320-026-00226-5 | biostudies-other |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other