Resource reallocation in bacteria by reengineering the gene expression machinery
Abstract
Bacteria have evolved complex regulatory networks to control the activity of
transcription and translation, and thus the growth rate, over a range of environmental
conditions. Reengineering RNA polymerase and ribosomes allows modifying naturally evolved
regulatory networks and thereby profoundly reorganizing the manner in which
bacteria allocate resources to different cellular functions. This opens new opportunities
for our fundamental understanding of microbial physiology and for a variety of
applications. Recent breakthroughs in genome engineering and the miniaturization and
automation of culturing methods have offered new perspectives for the reengineering
of the transcription and translation machinery in bacteria as well as the development of
novel in vitro and in vivo gene expression systems. We review different examples from
the unifying perspective of resource reallocation, and discuss the impact of these
approaches for microbial systems biology and biotechnological applications.