Comprehensive analysis of central carbon metabolism reveals multiple connections between nutrients, biosynthetic capacity, and cell morphology in Escherichia coli

Bacterial morphology is a complex trait that is highly sensitive to changes in the environment. For heterotrophic organisms, such as Escherichia coli, increases in nutrient levels are frequently accompanied by several-fold increases in both size and growth rate. Despite the dramatic nature of these changes, how alterations in nutrient availability translate into changes in growth and morphology remains a largely open question. To understand the signaling networks coupling nutrient availability with size and shape, we examined the impact of deletions in the entirety of non-essential central carbon metabolic genes on E. coli growth rate and cell size. Our data reveal the presence of multiple metabolic nodes that play important yet distinctive roles in shaping the cell. Consistent with recent work from our lab and others, although both are sensitive to nutrient availability, size and growth rate vary independently. Cell width and length also appear to be independent phenomena, influenced by different aspects of central carbon metabolism. These findings highlight the diversity of factors that can impact cell morphology and provide a foundation for further studies.\n\nAuthor summaryOften taken for granted, the shape of bacterial cells is a complex trait that is highly sensitive to environmental perturbations. Nutrients in particular, strongly impact bacterial morphology together with growth rate. The ubiquitous, rod-shaped bacteria Escherichia coli increases both length and width several fold upon a shift from nutrient poor to nutrient rich medium, a change accompanied by an equally dramatic increase in growth rate. Central carbon metabolism is an obvious site for the integration of nutrient dependent signals that dictate cell size and shape. To develop a clearer picture of the molecular mechanisms coupling nutrient assimilation with cell growth and morphology, we screened the entirety of nonessential carbon metabolic genes for their contribution to growth rate and cell shape. Our data reveal the presence of multiple regulatory circuits coordinating different metabolic pathways with specific aspects of cell growth and morphology. Together, these data firmly establish a role for central carbon metabolism as an environmentally sensitive sculptor of bacterial cells.