ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2015
The dynamic balance of import and export of zinc in Escherichia coli suggests a heterogeneous population response to stress.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- The E. coli escape wave in response to external ZnBiometals : an international journal on the role of metal ions in biology, biochemistry, and medicine · 2025Article
- Unravelling the mechanisms of antibiotic and heavy metal resistance co-selection in environmental bacteria.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2024Review
- The impact of zinc pre-exposure on ciprofloxacin resistance development inFrontiers in microbiology · 2024Article
- One-carbon metabolism, folate, zinc and translation.Microbial biotechnology · 2020Article
- Zinc binding proteome of a phytopathogenRoyal Society open science · 2019Article
- Endopeptidase Regulation as a Novel Function of the Zur-Dependent Zinc Starvation Response.mBio · 2019Article
- X-ray Fluorescence Nanotomography of Single Bacteria with a Sub-15 nm Beam.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Reconstructing promoter activity from Lux bioluminescent reporters.PLoS computational biology · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Zinc is essential for life, but toxic in excess. Thus all cells must control their internal zinc concentration. We used a systems approach, alternating rounds of experiments and models, to further elucidate the zinc control systems in Escherichia coli. We measured the response to zinc of the main specific zinc import and export systems in the wild-type, and a series of deletion mutant strains. We interpreted these data with a detailed mathematical model and Bayesian model fitting routines. There are three key findings: first, that alternate, non-inducible importers and exporters are important. Second, that an internal zinc reservoir is essential for maintaining the internal zinc concentration. Third, our data fitting led us to propose that the cells mount a heterogeneous response to zinc: some respond effectively, while others die or stop growing. In a further round of experiments, we demonstrated lower viable cell counts in the mutant strain tested exposed to excess zinc, consistent with this hypothesis. A stochastic model simulation demonstrated considerable fluctuations in the cellular levels of the ZntA exporter protein, reinforcing this proposal. We hypothesize that maintaining population heterogeneity could be a bet-hedging response allowing a population of cells to survive in varied and fluctuating environments.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.