Zeitschrift für analytische und bioanalytische Techniken

Abstrakt

Characterization of Clostridium acetobutylicum Protein Interaction Network from Butanol Fermentation

Kumaran Sivagnanam, Vijaya G.S. Raghavan, Manesh Shah, Robert L Hettich, Nathan C Verberkmoes and Mark G Lefsrud

Successful industrial production of butanol requires an in depth knowledge of Clostridium acetobutylicum. Development of computational approaches for protein interaction studies enabled us to generate a predicted protein interaction network of C. acetobutylicum ATCC 824. In this study, over 400 proteins from C. acetobutylicum were identified during butanol fermentation using shotgun proteomics and from only 217 proteins, we predicted 1947 interactions. This analysis showed that C. acetobutylicum proteins form a highly interconnected network and the main represented functions were found to be protein synthesis, carbohydrate metabolism and butanoate metabolism. We further used this interaction data to analyse the enrichment of gene ontology terms and pathways in C. acetobutylicum. Our analysis revealed that biological processes such as translation, cellular protein metabolic process, biosynthetic process, and pathways including glycolysis, butanoate metabolism were significantly enriched in C. acetobutylicum during butanol fermentation. This study provides a novel insight into the functional mechanisms of C. acetobutylicum at the network level complementing the current knowledge in relation to this industrially important organism.