RT Journal
A1 Reuß, Daniel R.
A1 Altenbuchner, Josef
A1 Mäder, Ulrike
A1 Rath, Hermann
A1 Ischebeck, Till
A1 Sappa, Praveen Kumar
A1 Thürmer, Andrea
A1 Guérin, Cyprien
A1 Nicolas, Pierre
A1 Steil, Leif
A1 Zhu, Bingyao
A1 Feussner, Ivo
A1 Klumpp, Stefan
A1 Daniel, Rolf
A1 Commichau, Fabian M.
A1 Völker, Uwe
A1 Stülke, Jörg
T1 Large-scale reduction of the Bacillus subtilis genome: consequences for the transcriptional network, resource allocation, and metabolism
JF Genome Research 
JO Genome Research 
YR 2017 
FD February 01 
VO 27 
IS 2 
SP 289 
OP 299 
DO 10.1101/gr.215293.116 
UL http://genome.cshlp.org/content/27/2/289.abstract 
AB Understanding cellular life requires a comprehensive knowledge of the essential cellular functions, the components involved, and their interactions. Minimized genomes are an important tool to gain this knowledge. We have constructed strains of the model bacterium, Bacillus subtilis, whose genomes have been reduced by ∼36%. These strains are fully viable, and their growth rates in complex medium are comparable to those of wild type strains. An in-depth multi-omics analysis of the genome reduced strains revealed how the deletions affect the transcription regulatory network of the cell, translation resource allocation, and metabolism. A comparison of gene counts and resource allocation demonstrates drastic differences in the two parameters, with 50% of the genes using as little as 10% of translation capacity, whereas the 6% essential genes require 57% of the translation resources. Taken together, the results are a valuable resource on gene dispensability in B. subtilis, and they suggest the roads to further genome reduction to approach the final aim of a minimal cell in which all functions are understood.