QSB: Experimental Driven Computational Analysis of E. coli Global Redox Sensing/Regulatory Networks and Cellular Responses

William Marsh Rice University, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

The overall objective of this project is to develop an integrated quantitative framework, consistent with existing mechanistic knowledge and well-designed in-house experiments, for the study and eventual enhancement of the Escherichia coli oxygen and redox sensing/regulatory system. Experimental data will be obtained from the literature and the investigators' laboratories. The specific goals are: (1) to construct an experimentally verifiable model of the genetic network of the oxygen and redox sensing/regulatory system; (2) to develop a scheme for distilling maps of metabolic pathways from the network models achieved in (1); (3) to generate metabolic patterns based on the predicted metabolic pathway maps using standard metabolic flux analysis techniques; (4) to construct mutant strains to be used in bioreactor experiments to support the modeling effort; and (5) to perform bioreactor experiments to generate quantitative data to be used to refine and validate the network and pathway models.