Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) play a significant role in biotechnology, e.g., food industry and also in human health. Many LAB genera have developed a multidrug resistance in the past few years, causing a serious problem in controlling hospital germs worldwide. Enterococcus faecalis accounts for a large part of the human infections caused by LABs. Therefore, studying its adaptive metabolism under various environmental conditions is particularly important to promote the development of new therapeutic approaches. In this study, we investigated the effect of glutamine auxotrophy (ΔglnA mutant) on metabolic and proteomic adaptations of E. faecalis in response to a changing pH in its environment. Changing pH values are part of the organism's natural environment in the human body and play a role in the food industry. We compared the results with those of the wildtype. Using a genome-scale metabolic model constrained by metabolic and proteomic data, our integrative method allows us to understand the bigger picture of the adaptation strategies of this bacterium. The study showed that energy demand is the decisive factor in adapting to a new environmental pH. The energy demand of the mutant was higher at all conditions. It has been reported that ΔglnA mutants of bacteria are energetically less effective. With the aid of our data and model we are able to explain this phenomenon as a consequence of a failure to regulate glutamine uptake and the costs for the import of glutamine and the export of ammonium. Methodologically, it became apparent that taking into account the nonspecificity of amino acid transporters is important for reproducing metabolic changes with genome-scale models because it affects energy balance. IMPORTANCE The integration of new pH-dependent experimental data on metabolic uptake and release fluxes, as well as of proteome data with a genome-scale computational model of a glutamine synthetase mutant of E. faecalis is used and compared with those of the wildtype to understand why glutamine auxotrophy results in a less efficient metabolism and how-in comparison with the wildtype-the glutamine synthetase knockout impacts metabolic adjustments during acidification or simply exposure to lower pH. We show that forced glutamine auxotrophy causes more energy demand and that this is likely due to a disregulated glutamine uptake. Proteome changes during acidification observed for the mutant resemble those of the wildtype with the exception of glycolysis-related genes, as the mutant is already energetically stressed at a higher pH and the respective proteome changes were in effect.
Keywords: Enterococcus faecalis; glutamine synthase mutant; pH adaptation.