TY - JOUR AB - Temperate bacteriophages integrate in bacterial genomes as prophages and represent an important source of genetic variation for bacterial evolution, frequently transmitting fitness-augmenting genes such as toxins responsible for virulence of major pathogens. However, only a fraction of bacteriophage infections are lysogenic and lead to prophage acquisition, whereas the majority are lytic and kill the infected bacteria. Unless able to discriminate lytic from lysogenic infections, mechanisms of immunity to bacteriophages are expected to act as a double-edged sword and increase the odds of survival at the cost of depriving bacteria of potentially beneficial prophages. We show that although restriction-modification systems as mechanisms of innate immunity prevent both lytic and lysogenic infections indiscriminately in individual bacteria, they increase the number of prophage-acquiring individuals at the population level. We find that this counterintuitive result is a consequence of phage-host population dynamics, in which restriction-modification systems delay infection onset until bacteria reach densities at which the probability of lysogeny increases. These results underscore the importance of population-level dynamics as a key factor modulating costs and benefits of immunity to temperate bacteriophages AU - Pleska, Maros AU - Lang, Moritz AU - Refardt, Dominik AU - Levin, Bruce AU - Guet, Calin C ID - 457 IS - 2 JF - Nature Ecology and Evolution TI - Phage-host population dynamics promotes prophage acquisition in bacteria with innate immunity VL - 2 ER - TY - JOUR AB - G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) form the largest receptor family, relay environmental stimuli to changes in cell behavior and represent prime drug targets. Many GPCRs are classified as orphan receptors because of the limited knowledge on their ligands and coupling to cellular signaling machineries. Here, we engineer a library of 63 chimeric receptors that contain the signaling domains of human orphan and understudied GPCRs functionally linked to the light-sensing domain of rhodopsin. Upon stimulation with visible light, we identify activation of canonical cell signaling pathways, including cAMP-, Ca2+-, MAPK/ERK-, and Rho-dependent pathways, downstream of the engineered receptors. For the human pseudogene GPR33, we resurrect a signaling function that supports its hypothesized role as a pathogen entry site. These results demonstrate that substituting unknown chemical activators with a light switch can reveal information about protein function and provide an optically controlled protein library for exploring the physiology and therapeutic potential of understudied GPCRs. AU - Morri, Maurizio AU - Sanchez-Romero, Inmaculada AU - Tichy, Alexandra-Madelaine AU - Kainrath, Stephanie AU - Gerrard, Elliot J. AU - Hirschfeld, Priscila AU - Schwarz, Jan AU - Janovjak, Harald L ID - 5984 IS - 1 JF - Nature Communications SN - 2041-1723 TI - Optical functionalization of human class A orphan G-protein-coupled receptors VL - 9 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Bacteria regulate genes to survive antibiotic stress, but regulation can be far from perfect. When regulation is not optimal, mutations that change gene expression can contribute to antibiotic resistance. It is not systematically understood to what extent natural gene regulation is or is not optimal for distinct antibiotics, and how changes in expression of specific genes quantitatively affect antibiotic resistance. Here we discover a simple quantitative relation between fitness, gene expression, and antibiotic potency, which rationalizes our observation that a multitude of genes and even innate antibiotic defense mechanisms have expression that is critically nonoptimal under antibiotic treatment. First, we developed a pooled-strain drug-diffusion assay and screened Escherichia coli overexpression and knockout libraries, finding that resistance to a range of 31 antibiotics could result from changing expression of a large and functionally diverse set of genes, in a primarily but not exclusively drug-specific manner. Second, by synthetically controlling the expression of single-drug and multidrug resistance genes, we observed that their fitness-expression functions changed dramatically under antibiotic treatment in accordance with a log-sensitivity relation. Thus, because many genes are nonoptimally expressed under antibiotic treatment, many regulatory mutations can contribute to resistance by altering expression and by activating latent defenses. AU - Palmer, Adam AU - Chait, Remy P AU - Kishony, Roy ID - 19 IS - 11 JF - Molecular Biology and Evolution SN - 0737-4038 TI - Nonoptimal gene expression creates latent potential for antibiotic resistance VL - 35 ER - TY - JOUR AB - The MazF toxin sequence-specifically cleaves single-stranded RNA upon various stressful conditions, and it is activated as a part of the mazEF toxin–antitoxin module in Escherichia coli. Although autoregulation of mazEF expression through the MazE antitoxin-dependent transcriptional repression has been biochemically characterized, less is known about post-transcriptional autoregulation, as well as how both of these autoregulatory features affect growth of single cells during conditions that promote MazF production. Here, we demonstrate post-transcriptional autoregulation of mazF expression dynamics by MazF cleaving its own transcript. Single-cell analyses of bacterial populations during ectopic MazF production indicated that two-level autoregulation of mazEF expression influences cell-to-cell growth rate heterogeneity. The increase in growth rate heterogeneity is governed by the MazE antitoxin, and tuned by the MazF-dependent mazF mRNA cleavage. Also, both autoregulatory features grant rapid exit from the stress caused by mazF overexpression. Time-lapse microscopy revealed that MazF-mediated cleavage of mazF mRNA leads to increased temporal variability in length of individual cells during ectopic mazF overexpression, as explained by a stochastic model indicating that mazEF mRNA cleavage underlies temporal fluctuations in MazF levels during stress. AU - Nikolic, Nela AU - Bergmiller, Tobias AU - Vandervelde, Alexandra AU - Albanese, Tanino AU - Gelens, Lendert AU - Moll, Isabella ID - 438 IS - 6 JF - Nucleic Acids Research TI - Autoregulation of mazEF expression underlies growth heterogeneity in bacterial populations VL - 46 ER - TY - DATA AB - Nela Nikolic, Tobias Bergmiller, Alexandra Vandervelde, Tanino G. Albanese, Lendert Gelens, and Isabella Moll (2018) “Autoregulation of mazEF expression underlies growth heterogeneity in bacterial populations” Nucleic Acids Research, doi: 10.15479/AT:ISTA:74; microscopy experiments by Tobias Bergmiller; image and data analysis by Nela Nikolic. AU - Bergmiller, Tobias AU - Nikolic, Nela ID - 5569 KW - microscopy KW - microfluidics TI - Time-lapse microscopy data ER - TY - JOUR AB - Which properties of metabolic networks can be derived solely from stoichiometry? Predictive results have been obtained by flux balance analysis (FBA), by postulating that cells set metabolic fluxes to maximize growth rate. Here we consider a generalization of FBA to single-cell level using maximum entropy modeling, which we extend and test experimentally. Specifically, we define for Escherichia coli metabolism a flux distribution that yields the experimental growth rate: the model, containing FBA as a limit, provides a better match to measured fluxes and it makes a wide range of predictions: on flux variability, regulation, and correlations; on the relative importance of stoichiometry vs. optimization; on scaling relations for growth rate distributions. We validate the latter here with single-cell data at different sub-inhibitory antibiotic concentrations. The model quantifies growth optimization as emerging from the interplay of competitive dynamics in the population and regulation of metabolism at the level of single cells. AU - De Martino, Daniele AU - Mc, Andersson Anna AU - Bergmiller, Tobias AU - Guet, Calin C AU - Tkacik, Gasper ID - 161 IS - 1 JF - Nature Communications TI - Statistical mechanics for metabolic networks during steady state growth VL - 9 ER - TY - THES AB - Expression of genes is a fundamental molecular phenotype that is subject to evolution by different types of mutations. Both the rate and the effect of mutations may depend on the DNA sequence context of a particular gene or a particular promoter sequence. In this thesis I investigate the nature of this dependence using simple genetic systems in Escherichia coli. With these systems I explore the evolution of constitutive gene expression from random starting sequences at different loci on the chromosome and at different locations in sequence space. First, I dissect chromosomal neighborhood effects that underlie locus-dependent differences in the potential of a gene under selection to become more highly expressed. Next, I find that the effects of point mutations in promoter sequences are dependent on sequence context, and that an existing energy matrix model performs poorly in predicting relative expression of unrelated sequences. Finally, I show that a substantial fraction of random sequences contain functional promoters and I present an extended thermodynamic model that predicts promoter strength in full sequence space. Taken together, these results provide new insights and guides on how to integrate information on sequence context to improve our qualitative and quantitative understanding of bacterial gene expression, with implications for rapid evolution of drug resistance, de novo evolution of genes, and horizontal gene transfer. AU - Steinrück, Magdalena ID - 26 SN - 2663-337X TI - The influence of sequence context on the evolution of bacterial gene expression ER - TY - JOUR AB - Gene regulatory networks evolve through rewiring of individual components—that is, through changes in regulatory connections. However, the mechanistic basis of regulatory rewiring is poorly understood. Using a canonical gene regulatory system, we quantify the properties of transcription factors that determine the evolutionary potential for rewiring of regulatory connections: robustness, tunability and evolvability. In vivo repression measurements of two repressors at mutated operator sites reveal their contrasting evolutionary potential: while robustness and evolvability were positively correlated, both were in trade-off with tunability. Epistatic interactions between adjacent operators alleviated this trade-off. A thermodynamic model explains how the differences in robustness, tunability and evolvability arise from biophysical characteristics of repressor–DNA binding. The model also uncovers that the energy matrix, which describes how mutations affect repressor–DNA binding, encodes crucial information about the evolutionary potential of a repressor. The biophysical determinants of evolutionary potential for regulatory rewiring constitute a mechanistic framework for understanding network evolution. AU - Igler, Claudia AU - Lagator, Mato AU - Tkacik, Gasper AU - Bollback, Jonathan P AU - Guet, Calin C ID - 67 IS - 10 JF - Nature Ecology and Evolution TI - Evolutionary potential of transcription factors for gene regulatory rewiring VL - 2 ER - TY - DATA AB - Mean repression values and standard error of the mean are given for all operator mutant libraries. AU - Igler, Claudia AU - Lagator, Mato AU - Tkacik, Gasper AU - Bollback, Jonathan P AU - Guet, Calin C ID - 5585 TI - Data for the paper Evolutionary potential of transcription factors for gene regulatory rewiring ER - TY - JOUR AB - Optogenetik und Photopharmakologie ermöglichen präzise räumliche und zeitliche Kontrolle von Proteinwechselwirkung und -funktion in Zellen und Tieren. Optogenetische Methoden, die auf grünes Licht ansprechen und zum Trennen von Proteinkomplexen geeignet sind, sind nichtweitläufig verfügbar, würden jedoch mehrfarbige Experimente zur Beantwortung von biologischen Fragestellungen ermöglichen. Hier demonstrieren wir die Verwendung von Cobalamin(Vitamin B12)-bindenden Domänen von bakteriellen CarH-Transkriptionsfaktoren zur Grünlicht-induzierten Dissoziation von Rezeptoren. Fusioniert mit dem Fibroblasten-W achstumsfaktor-Rezeptor 1 führten diese im Dunkeln in kultivierten Zellen zu Signalaktivität durch Oligomerisierung, welche durch Beleuchten umgehend aufgehoben wurde. In Zebrafischembryonen, die einen derartigen Rezeptor exprimieren, ermöglichte grünes Licht die Kontrolle über abnormale Signalaktivität während der Embryonalentwicklung. AU - Kainrath, Stephanie AU - Stadler, Manuela AU - Gschaider-Reichhart, Eva AU - Distel, Martin AU - Janovjak, Harald L ID - 538 IS - 16 JF - Angewandte Chemie TI - Grünlicht-induzierte Rezeptorinaktivierung durch Cobalamin-bindende Domänen VL - 129 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Most phenotypes are determined by molecular systems composed of specifically interacting molecules. However, unlike for individual components, little is known about the distributions of mutational effects of molecular systems as a whole. We ask how the distribution of mutational effects of a transcriptional regulatory system differs from the distributions of its components, by first independently, and then simultaneously, mutating a transcription factor and the associated promoter it represses. We find that the system distribution exhibits increased phenotypic variation compared to individual component distributions - an effect arising from intermolecular epistasis between the transcription factor and its DNA-binding site. In large part, this epistasis can be qualitatively attributed to the structure of the transcriptional regulatory system and could therefore be a common feature in prokaryotes. Counter-intuitively, intermolecular epistasis can alleviate the constraints of individual components, thereby increasing phenotypic variation that selection could act on and facilitating adaptive evolution. AU - Lagator, Mato AU - Sarikas, Srdjan AU - Acar, Hande AU - Bollback, Jonathan P AU - Guet, Calin C ID - 570 JF - eLife SN - 2050084X TI - Regulatory network structure determines patterns of intermolecular epistasis VL - 6 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Bacteria in groups vary individually, and interact with other bacteria and the environment to produce population-level patterns of gene expression. Investigating such behavior in detail requires measuring and controlling populations at the single-cell level alongside precisely specified interactions and environmental characteristics. Here we present an automated, programmable platform that combines image-based gene expression and growth measurements with on-line optogenetic expression control for hundreds of individual Escherichia coli cells over days, in a dynamically adjustable environment. This integrated platform broadly enables experiments that bridge individual and population behaviors. We demonstrate: (i) population structuring by independent closed-loop control of gene expression in many individual cells, (ii) cell-cell variation control during antibiotic perturbation, (iii) hybrid bio-digital circuits in single cells, and freely specifiable digital communication between individual bacteria. These examples showcase the potential for real-time integration of theoretical models with measurement and control of many individual cells to investigate and engineer microbial population behavior. AU - Chait, Remy P AU - Ruess, Jakob AU - Bergmiller, Tobias AU - Tkacik, Gasper AU - Guet, Calin C ID - 613 IS - 1 JF - Nature Communications SN - 20411723 TI - Shaping bacterial population behavior through computer interfaced control of individual cells VL - 8 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Bacteria adapt to adverse environmental conditions by altering gene expression patterns. Recently, a novel stress adaptation mechanism has been described that allows Escherichia coli to alter gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. The key player in this regulatory pathway is the endoribonuclease MazF, the toxin component of the toxin-antitoxin module mazEF that is triggered by various stressful conditions. In general, MazF degrades the majority of transcripts by cleaving at ACA sites, which results in the retardation of bacterial growth. Furthermore, MazF can process a small subset of mRNAs and render them leaderless by removing their ribosome binding site. MazF concomitantly modifies ribosomes, making them selective for the translation of leaderless mRNAs. In this study, we employed fluorescent reporter-systems to investigate mazEF expression during stressful conditions, and to infer consequences of the mRNA processing mediated by MazF on gene expression at the single-cell level. Our results suggest that mazEF transcription is maintained at low levels in single cells encountering adverse conditions, such as antibiotic stress or amino acid starvation. Moreover, using the grcA mRNA as a model for MazF-mediated mRNA processing, we found that MazF activation promotes heterogeneity in the grcA reporter expression, resulting in a subpopulation of cells with increased levels of GrcA reporter protein. AU - Nikolic, Nela AU - Didara, Zrinka AU - Moll, Isabella ID - 624 IS - 9 JF - PeerJ SN - 21678359 TI - MazF activation promotes translational heterogeneity of the grcA mRNA in Escherichia coli populations VL - 2017 ER - TY - JOUR AB - The bacterial flagellum is a self-assembling nanomachine. The external flagellar filament, several times longer than a bacterial cell body, is made of a few tens of thousands subunits of a single protein: flagellin. A fundamental problem concerns the molecular mechanism of how the flagellum grows outside the cell, where no discernible energy source is available. Here, we monitored the dynamic assembly of individual flagella using in situ labelling and real-time immunostaining of elongating flagellar filaments. We report that the rate of flagellum growth, initially ~1,700 amino acids per second, decreases with length and that the previously proposed chain mechanism does not contribute to the filament elongation dynamics. Inhibition of the proton motive force-dependent export apparatus revealed a major contribution of substrate injection in driving filament elongation. The combination of experimental and mathematical evidence demonstrates that a simple, injection-diffusion mechanism controls bacterial flagella growth outside the cell. AU - Renault, Thibaud AU - Abraham, Anthony AU - Bergmiller, Tobias AU - Paradis, Guillaume AU - Rainville, Simon AU - Charpentier, Emmanuelle AU - Guet, Calin C AU - Tu, Yuhai AU - Namba, Keiichi AU - Keener, James AU - Minamino, Tohru AU - Erhardt, Marc ID - 655 JF - eLife SN - 2050084X TI - Bacterial flagella grow through an injection diffusion mechanism VL - 6 ER - TY - JOUR AB - While we have good understanding of bacterial metabolism at the population level, we know little about the metabolic behavior of individual cells: do single cells in clonal populations sometimes specialize on different metabolic pathways? Such metabolic specialization could be driven by stochastic gene expression and could provide individual cells with growth benefits of specialization. We measured the degree of phenotypic specialization in two parallel metabolic pathways, the assimilation of glucose and arabinose. We grew Escherichia coli in chemostats, and used isotope-labeled sugars in combination with nanometer-scale secondary ion mass spectrometry and mathematical modeling to quantify sugar assimilation at the single-cell level. We found large variation in metabolic activities between single cells, both in absolute assimilation and in the degree to which individual cells specialize in the assimilation of different sugars. Analysis of transcriptional reporters indicated that this variation was at least partially based on cell-to-cell variation in gene expression. Metabolic differences between cells in clonal populations could potentially reduce metabolic incompatibilities between different pathways, and increase the rate at which parallel reactions can be performed. AU - Nikolic, Nela AU - Schreiber, Frank AU - Dal Co, Alma AU - Kiviet, Daniel AU - Bergmiller, Tobias AU - Littmann, Sten AU - Kuypers, Marcel AU - Ackermann, Martin ID - 541 IS - 12 JF - PLoS Genetics SN - 15537390 TI - Cell-to-cell variation and specialization in sugar metabolism in clonal bacterial populations VL - 13 ER - TY - GEN AB - information on culture conditions, phage mutagenesis, verification and lysate preparation; Raw data AU - Pleska, Maros AU - Guet, Calin C ID - 9847 TI - Supplementary materials and methods; Full data set from effects of mutations in phage restriction sites during escape from restriction–modification ER - TY - GEN AB - Estimates of 13 C-arabinose and 2 H-glucose uptake from the fractions of heavy isotopes measured in single cells AU - Nikolic, Nela AU - Schreiber, Frank AU - Dal Co, Alma AU - Kiviet, Daniel AU - Bergmiller, Tobias AU - Littmann, Sten AU - Kuypers, Marcel AU - Ackermann, Martin ID - 9845 TI - Mathematical model ER - TY - GEN AB - This text provides additional information about the model, a derivation of the analytic results in Eq (4), and details about simulations of an additional parameter set. AU - Lukacisinova, Marta AU - Novak, Sebastian AU - Paixao, Tiago ID - 9849 TI - Modelling and simulation details ER - TY - GEN AB - In this text, we discuss how a cost of resistance and the possibility of lethal mutations impact our model. AU - Lukacisinova, Marta AU - Novak, Sebastian AU - Paixao, Tiago ID - 9850 TI - Extensions of the model ER - TY - GEN AU - Nikolic, Nela AU - Schreiber, Frank AU - Dal Co, Alma AU - Kiviet, Daniel AU - Bergmiller, Tobias AU - Littmann, Sten AU - Kuypers, Marcel AU - Ackermann, Martin ID - 9846 TI - Supplementary methods ER -