[School of Agriculture] ISEKI Kanako receives the Young Scientist Excellent Presentation Award at the 39th Research Conference of the Euglena Research Association
Dec. 04, 2024
ISEKI Kanako, a four-year student at the Environmental Biotechnology Laboratory (Associate Professor OSANAI Takashi) received the Young Scientist Excellent Presentation Award at the 39th Research Conference of the Euglena Research Association.
Presentation subject: “2-oxoglutarate (2-OG) maintenance mechanism in Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 associated with the enhancement of 2-oxoglutarate synthase”
Research content:
In organisms, maintaining a carbon/nitrogen (C/N) balance is extremely important for metabolic activity and growth. In particular, cyanobacteria, which are the most primitive autotrophic organisms that assimilate carbon and nitrogen, require strict regulation in order to maintain a C/N balance in the face of fluctuating amounts of available carbon and nitrogen.
2-oxoglutarate (2-OG) plays a crucial role in maintaining the C/N balance in cyanobacteria. In addition to being an intermediate metabolite of the citric acid cycle, 2-OG is also used in the synthesis of amino acids in the nitrogen assimilation pathway. Therefore, 2-OG is regarded as a key metabolite that links carbon and nitrogen metabolism. It is also known that 2-OG is involved in the activation of transcription factors that control various carbon and nitrogen metabolisms.
The key metabolite 2-OG needs to be maintained at a constant level under normal conditions, but the maintenance mechanism has not received much attention. Therefore, it was verified whether it is possible to maintain the amount of 2-OG when the amount of 2-OG supply is increased. In this study, a mutant strain overexpressing the gene encoding 2-OG synthase was created in order to analyze the metabolites containing 2-OG in the model cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 (Synechocystis).
As a result, although 2-OG content did not increase in the mutant strain compared to the control strain, an increase in glycogen, which is a source of protein and carbon storage, was confirmed. These results suggest that Synechocystis maintains a constant level of 2-OG by promoting its conversion to amino acids when the supply of 2-OG increases. In addition, the increase in glycogen suggests an increase in the total amount of carbon in the cell, and it is possible that carbon assimilation was promoted in conjunction with the increase in 2-OG supply.
The results of this study are expected to provide new insights into the mechanism of 2-OG maintenance in cyanobacteria and to contribute to a better understanding of carbon and nitrogen metabolism.
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