A Multiomics Approach Using Metabolomics and Lipidomics

Introduction

Microorganisms including Escherichia coli and yeast are used to mass produce useful substances in a variety of industrial sectors such as food, biotechnology, and energy. In the food sector, for example, fermentation processes that utilize microorganisms are widely used for alcoholic beverages and fermented foods, and microbial breeding is performed for the purpose of more efficient fermentative production and the production of high value-added metabolites. In order to improve the production efficiency of useful substances and increase the production capacity of such high value-added compounds, it is necessary to monitor metabolic changes using metabolomics. Since monitoring of metabolic changes not only requires an understanding of the target substance but also an understanding of the metabolic changes of the precursor and intermediates, the metabolomics approach is expected to be very effective because of the ability to simultaneously analyze a large number of compounds. This research attempts to understand metabolic changes from a multiomics approach by evaluating metabolic changes using metabolomics and combining the lipidomics results of phospholipids. The sample used was E. coli, which efficiently produces the sulfur-containing metabolite ergothioneine. Thiosulfate or sulfate was added as a sulfur source for the synthesis of cysteine which acts as the substrate for ergothioneine. By applying the approaches of metabolomics and lipidomics, this article introduces an example of evaluating how related sulfur-containing metabolites change depending on cultivation progression.

April 19, 2019 GMT