International Max Planck Research School for Genome Science

Project (Jörg Stülke)
The essence of life – construction and analysis of genome-reduced bacterial strains




Understanding cellular life requires a comprehensive knowledge of the essential cellular functions, the components involved, and their interactions. Minimized genomes are an important tool to gain this knowledge. In this project, we want to construct a minimized genome of the Gram-positive model bacterium Bacillus subtilis with the aim of identifying the protein and RNA molecules that are essential for growth of B. subtilis, their functions, and interactions. At the end, we aim at constructing a strain that we designate MiniBacillus (www.minibacillus.org). The main questions are:

  • Which genes and proteins have to be part of a minimal cell, and which components are dispensable?
  • How are the individual essential cellular functions organized?
  • How do the gene expression and metabolic networks adapt to the genome minimization?
  • How do the cells respond to genome minimization by the acquisition of mutations?

    • So far, we have reduced the genome of B. subtilis by more than 40% which is the most advanced genome reduction for any complex organism. In this project, we will continue the genome reduction to obtain finally a strain in which all remaining genes are essential for growth, and in which we understand the function of each component as well as their interactions. As the outcome of such an analysis does not only depend on the biology and lifestyle of the bacterium under investigation, but also on the chosen growth conditions, we have decided to attempt bacteria that are able to grow rapidly at 37°C in a complex medium supplemented with glucose as the carbon source. The project will involve genetic work, the characterization of genome-reduced strains by multi-omics analyses, as well as bioinformatic investigation of the genome-reduced strains.

    Bewerbung_Stuelke




    Homepage Research Group
    http://genmibio.uni-goettingen.de/



    For more information see for instance:
    Reuß, D. R., Commichau, F. M., Gundlach, J., Zhu, B., & Stülke, J. (2016) The blueprint of a minimal cell: MiniBacillus. Microbiol. Mol. Biol. Rev. 80:955-987.

    Reuß, D. R., Altenbuchner, J., Mäder, U., Rath, H., Ischebeck, T., Sappa, P. K., Thürmer, A., Guérin, C., Nicolas, P., Steil, L., Zhu, B., Feussner, I., Klumpp, S., Daniel, R., Commichau, F. M., Völker, U., & Stülke, J. (2017) Large-scale reduction of the Bacillus subtilis genome: consequences for the transcriptional network, resource allocation, and metabolism. Genome Res. 27: 289-299.

    Reuss, D. R., Commichau, F. M., & Stülke, J. (2017) The contribution of bacterial genome engineering to sustainable development. Microb. Biotechnol. 10: 1259-1263.