ArticleNature microbiology2018
Escherichia coli translation strategies differ across carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus limitation conditions.
Article in Nature microbiology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 88 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
88 citing papers in PubMed, 160 citations in OpenAlex.
- Coarse-grained resource allocation modeling for decoding and rewiring microbial metabolism.Trends in microbiology · 2026Review
- Bridging energy and proteome allocation models allows prediction of the resource cost of traits across environments.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Single-cell heterogeneity in ribosome levels and protein synthesis during nutrient starvation is driven by cAMP signaling.Science advances · 2026Article
- Energy-translation coupling limits anaerobic yeast growth.Nature communications · 2026Article
- RodA promotes intestinal colonization by group BInfection and immunity · 2026Article
- Article
- Intensified upstream processing by a phosphate-regulated, auto-inducible expression system in E. coli W3110 for recombinant Fab production.BMC microbiology · 2026Article
- Demonstration and technoeconomic analysis of dodecanol production from acetate using metabolically engineered Escherichia coli.Metabolic engineering · 2026Article
- Quantitative Coarse-Grained Modeling of Microbial Metabolism: Uncovering Growth Laws, Environmental Responses, and Host-Circuit Coupling.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2026Article
- Detection and Characterization of the Eukaryotic Vacant Ribosome.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- Maintenance of cytoplasmic and membrane densities shapes cellular geometry in Escherichia coli.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Carrot and stick: how RNase R contributes to function and destruction of the translation machinery.RNA biology · 2025Review
- Article
- Article
- Multiscale regulation of nutrient stress responses in Escherichia coli from chromatin structure to small regulatory RNAs.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- Gene Expression Depends on the Interplay Among Growth, Resource Biogenesis, and Nutrient Quality.ACS synthetic biology · 2025Article
- Reversible proliferative arrest induced by rapid depletion of RNase MRP.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Article
- Optimization of growth and induction conditions for the production of recombinant whole cell cyclohexanone monooxygenase in Escherichia coli.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Incoherent feedback from coupled amino acids and ribosome pools generates damped oscillations in growing E. coli.Nature communications · 2025Article
28 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
For cells to grow faster they must increase their protein production rate. Microorganisms have traditionally been thought to accomplish this increase by producing more ribosomes to enhance protein synthesis capacity, leading to the linear relationship between ribosome level and growth rate observed under most growth conditions previously examined. Past studies have suggested that this linear relationship represents an optimal resource allocation strategy for each growth rate, independent of any specific nutrient state. Here we investigate protein production strategies in continuous cultures limited for carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus, which differentially impact substrate supply for protein versus nucleic acid metabolism. Unexpectedly, we find that at slow growth rates, Escherichia coli achieves the same protein production rate using three different strategies under the three different nutrient limitations. Under phosphorus (P) limitation, translation is slow due to a particularly low abundance of ribosomes, which are RNA-rich and thus particularly costly for phosphorous-limited cells. Under nitrogen (N) limitation, translation elongation is slowed by processes including ribosome stalling at glutamine codons. Under carbon (C) limitation, translation is slowed by accumulation of inactive ribosomes not bound to messenger RNA. These extra ribosomes enable rapid growth acceleration during nutrient upshift. Thus, bacteria tune ribosome usage across different limiting nutrients to enable balanced nutrient-limited growth while also preparing for future nutrient upshifts.
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.