Increased Biomass Yield of Lactococcus lactis by Reduced Overconsumption of Amino Acids and Increased Catalytic Activities of Enzymes

Steady state cultivation and multidimensional data analysis (metabolic fluxes, absolute proteome, and transcriptome) are used to identify parameters that control the increase in biomass yield of Lactococcus lactis from 0.10 to 0.12 C-mol C-mol−1 with an increase in specific growth rate by 5 times from 0.1 to 0.5 h−1. Reorganization of amino acid consumption was expressed by the inactivation of the arginine deiminase pathway at a specific growth rate of 0.35 h−1 followed by reduced over-consumption of pyruvate directed amino acids (asparagine, serine, threonine, alanine and cysteine) until almost all consumed amino acids were used only for protein synthesis at maximal specific growth rate. This balanced growth was characterized by a high glycolytic flux carrying up to 87% of the carbon flow and only amino acids that relate to nucleotide synthesis (glutamine, serine and asparagine) were consumed in higher amounts than required for cellular protein synthesis. Changes in the proteome were minor (mainly increase in the translation apparatus). Instead, the apparent catalytic activities of enzymes and ribosomes increased by 3.5 times (0.1 vs 0.5 h−1). The apparent catalytic activities of glycolytic enzymes and ribosomal proteins were seen to follow this regulation pattern while those of enzymes involved in nucleotide metabolism increased more than the specific growth rate (over 5.5 times). Nucleotide synthesis formed the most abundant biomonomer synthetic pathway in the cells with an expenditure of 6% from the total ATP required for biosynthesis. Due to the increase in apparent catalytic activity, ribosome translation was more efficient at higher growth rates as evidenced by a decrease of protein to mRNA ratios. All these effects resulted in a 30% decrease of calculated ATP spilling (0.1 vs 0.5 h−1). Our results show that bioprocesses can be made more efficient (using a balanced metabolism) by varying the growth conditions.