The ‘model’ enterobacterium Escherichia coli exhibits a versatile metabolism (incorporating aerobic respiratory, anaerobic respiratory and fermentative metabolic modes) plus numerous and sometimes complex regulatory networks to achieve optimal growth and survival. The dynamics of adaptation to the provision of alternative electron acceptors is an understudied area with implications for E. coli competitiveness in Nature and its use as a cell factory. The project uses carefully controlled chemostat cultures combined with steady-state and time-resolved transcript, metabolite and protein profiling to obtain reproducible datasets that can be integrated into computational models with the aim of providing a mechanistic understanding of the processes of adaptation.
