Dokument-ID Dokumenttyp Autoren/innen Persönliche Herausgeber/innen Haupttitel Abstract Auflage Verlagsort Verlag Herausgeber (Institution) Erscheinungsjahr Titel des übergeordneten Werkes Jahrgang/Band ISBN Veranstaltung Veranstaltungsort Beginndatum der Veranstaltung Enddatum der Veranstaltung Ausgabe/Heft Erste Seite Letzte Seite URN DOI Lizenz Datum der Freischaltung OPUS4-43887 Zeitschriftenartikel Nikolic, Nela; Dal Co, Alma; Kiviet, Daniel J.; Bergmiller, Tobias; Littmann, Sten; Kuypers, Marcel M. M.; Ackermann, Martin; Schreiber, Frank Cell-to-cell variation and specialization in sugar metabolism in clonal bacterial populations 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. Cambridge, United Kingdom Public Library of Science 2017 PLoS Genetics 13 12 e1007122, 1 e1007122, 24 urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-438873 10.1371/journal.pgen.1007122 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.de 2018-01-23