Team:UGA-Georgia/Modeling

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Metabolic Modeling of Methanococcus maripaludis

Previously…

Our 2014 UGA-Georgia iGEM team mapped out the isoprenoid biosynthesis pathway for Methanococcus maripaludis, as we can take of this pathway’s production of high-carbon compounds. Additionally we adopted and adapted the M. maripaludis S2 metabolic model (iMM518) to contain exchange and formation reactions for geraniol synthase (Table 1). By incorporating the geraniol synthase gene, were able to calculate the rate of production of geraniol in a M. maripaludis cell using flux balance analysis.

Table 1. The geraniol synthase metabolites and reactions added to the original M. maripaludis metabolic model (iMM518) from BioModels Database.

This year, our 2015 UGA-Georgia iGEM team used our modified model to observe the rate of geraniol production after altering specific growth substrates, carbon dioxide (CO₂) and ammonium (NH₄). Shown below is the progression of flux balance analyses.

Target Growth Substrates:

Carbon source: CO₂

Nitrogen Source: NH₄

These two common growth substrates for M. maripaludis were chosen as our constraints, as they can be easily manipulated for in vivo experiments.

Target Products:

Biomass production

Geraniol production

The production of biomass for cells is essential and is significantly from isoprenoids. Geraniol is an isoprenoid derivative, so when targeting geraniol, we must also consider a reasonable biomass production rate.

Preliminary Observation:

Changes in CO₂/NH₄ ratio result in influenced biomass and geraniol production.

Exploring the Evidence:

Upon observing the relationship between the CO₂/NH₄ ratio and the production of our target products, biomass and geraniol, we began to specifically explore the ratio of these substrates. We explored two different options, (1) limiting nitrogen and (2) excess carbon.

Note

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