Final report: The Systems Biology of Protein Acetylation in Fuel-Producing Microorganisms

Project Goals: The goal of this project is to determine how protein acetylation affects metabolism in engineered microorganisms. Lysine acetylation is a common post-translational modification that eukaryotes, archaea, and bacteria employ to regulate protein activity. Multiple studies have recently shown that lysine acetylation predominantly targets metabolic enzymes – in fact, most metabolic enzymes are subject to lysine acetylation. Still, we know very little about the consequences of lysine acetylation, particularly in the case of bacteria. We hypothesize that bacteria employ lysine acetylation as a global mechanism to regulate metabolism in response to their energy and redox status. Our previous work suggests that lysine acetylation may be an attractive and innovative target for metabolic engineering. We are investigating how lysine acetylation affects fuel production in engineered microorganisms. The significance of this work is that it will address a fundamental gap in our understanding of bacterial metabolism and identify new approaches for overcoming the problems associated with the production of advanced biofuels.