Impact Of The Molecular Chaperone Hsp70 Dnak On The Escherichia Coli Central Metabolism

Intricate networks of highly conserved molecular chaperone machines govern cellular protein homeostasis, both under lenient and more stressful growth conditions. Members of the highly conserved HSP70 family of molecular chaperones are key players in this process, acting at nearly every step in protein biogenesis. The ATP-dependent chaperone cycle of HSP70 chaperones relies upon the cooperation with a cohort of essential cochaperones, including DnaJ/HSP40 family members that recruit the chaperone to specific substrate and/or cellular localization and stimulate its ATPase activity, and nucleotide exchange factors, which insure proper resetting of the chaperone cycle and the resulting substrate release. In the bacterium Escherichia coli, the multifunctional HSP70 chaperone, named DnaK, acts in concert with its cochaperones DnaJ and GrpE (all together referred as DnaKJE) to efficiently, assist de novo protein folding, protein disaggregation, protein targeting and translocation through biological membranes, and protein complexes remodeling leading to multiple cellular activities. Remarkably, previous works also showed that DnaKJE can efficiently cooperate with other major cytosolic chaperones, including the ribosome-bound Trigger Factor (TF) and the chaperonin GroESL, especially during the folding of newly-synthesized cytosolic proteins. In addition, one of the key cellular functions of DnaKJE in E. coli is the regulation of the heat shock response (HSR). In this case, DnaKJE controls the HSR by interacting directly with the heat shock sigma factor s32 subunit of the RNA polymerase to facilitate it degradation by the FtsH protease. Under stress condition, DnaKJE is recruited to accumulating misfolded proteins, leading to an increased stability of s32 and the subsequent induction of more than hundred heat shock proteins. Therefore, DnaK, and its cochaperones are central components of the cellular response to proteostasis collapse, both by acting directly on misfolded proteins and by modulating the synthesis a plethora of heat shock chaperones and proteases. The recently described in vivo interactome of DnaK in E. coli revealed that at least 50% of the central metabolism enzymes interact with DnaK at physiological temperature. Remarkably, through a multicopy suppression analysis we have now identified six genes of the central metabolism (CM), namely ackA, ldhA, lpd, pykF, talB and csrC, which when overexpressed partially suppress the growth defect of the sensitive double mutant lacking DnaK and Trigger Factor (deltatig deltadnaKJ ), with half of them, namely ackA, talB and csrC, additionally suppressing the growth defect of the single ?dnaKJ mutation at high temperature, thus strongly suggesting a major role of DnaK in this process. Using a combination of growth assays on specific carbon sources entering the CM at various metabolic nodes with NMR analyses for characterizing the carbon source assimilation, identifying and quantifying the metabolism by-products and determining metabolic flux rearrangements, we show that DnaKJE impacts the responsiveness of the central metabolism by acting either directly at the level of the CM or along the first step of substrate assimilation. How does the multifunctional DnaK chaperone modulate the CM, either directly or indirectly via the control of the HSR, in response to proteostasis failure or nutrient starvation is discussed.