Special Issue "Metabolic Functionality of Microorganisms under Dynamic Environments"
A special issue of Metabolites (ISSN 2218-1989). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Metabolomics".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2022) | Viewed by 5369
Special Issue Editor
Interests: metabolic networks; metabolomics; modelling; microbial communities; industrial biotechnology
Special Issue Information
Microbes survive in nearly every niche on the planet, thanks to an enormous metabolic flexibility and capability to adapt. Natural but also engineered environments are highly dynamic, with changes in temperature, pH, oxygen, and substrate concentrations. Examples include day/night cycles, tidal regions, but also wastewater treatment plants or large-scale bioreactors with gradients originating from mass transfer limitations. The speed of dynamics ranges between (sub)seconds and several hours.
Such dynamic environments challenge the metabolism, and tight regulation needs to be in place to ensure a safe transition without energy depletion during famine or acidification of the cytosol after a substrate pulse. Prominent examples include poly phosphate or carbohydrate storage pools that are used to buffer between phases of feast and famine.
This Special Issue invites contributions on microorganisms under dynamic cultivation conditions or describing theoretical approaches to predict metabolic functions.
Keywords
- Microbial metabolism
- Metabolic modeling
- Dynamic environments
- Metabolomics
- Systems biology
- Industrial and environmental biotechnology