"Unprecedented large-scale quantitative analysis of bacterium provides detailed picture of metabolic network robustness."
Scientists at the Institute for Advanced Biosciences of Keio University located in Tsuruoka City, Japan report in an advanced on-line publication released today in Science Express, a first-of-a-kind quantitative picture of molecular components of the common intestinal bacterium E. coli. The report is due to appear in print in the April 27 issue of Science, a leading journal of original scientific research. Using multiple state-of-the-art analytical technologies, the group studied this unicellular organism at an unprecedented depth to reveal the remarkable overall robustness of its metabolic network to gene deletion and changes in growth conditions. [Bioinformatics Laboratory]