Carbon Backbone Topology of the Metabolome of a Cell

• Published in: Journal of the American Chemical Society 2012-05, Vol.134 (21), p.9006-9011
• Main Authors: Bingol, Kerem, Zhang, Fengli, Bruschweiler-Li, Lei, Brüschweiler, Rafael
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Carbon; Escherichia coli - cytology; Escherichia coli - metabolism; Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy - methods; Metabolomics - methods
• ISSN: 0002-7863; 1520-5126
• DOI: 10.1021/ja3033058

The complex metabolic makeup of a biological system, such as a cell, is a key determinant of its biological state providing unique insights into its function. Here we characterize the metabolome of a cell by a novel homonuclear 13C 2D NMR approach applied to a nonfractionated uniformly 13C-enriched lysate of E. coli cells and determine de novo their carbon backbone topologies that constitute the “topolome”. A protocol was developed, which first identifies traces in a constant-time 13C–13C TOCSY NMR spectrum that are unique for individual mixture components and then assembles for each trace the corresponding carbon-bond topology network by consensus clustering. This led to the determination of 112 topologies of unique metabolites from a single sample. The topolome is dominated by carbon topologies of carbohydrates (34.8%) and amino acids (45.5%) that can constitute building blocks of more complex structures.