Diauxic growth of microorganisms

[garytse86]

Hi. Just a problem with diauxic growth. If there are glucose and lactose in a medium, the glucose will exhibit catabolic repression, inhibiting the syntheis of lactase. However when glucose is in scarce supply a microogranism will start making lactase.

The problem is, when lactase hydrolyses lactose, giving galactose and glucose, wouldn't the glucose from lactose cause catabolic repression?

 

[iansmith]

Hi. Just a problem with diauxic growth. If there are glucose and lactose in a medium, the glucose will exhibit catabolic repression, inhibiting the syntheis of lactase. However when glucose is in scarce supply a microogranism will start making lactase.

The problem is, when lactase hydrolyses lactose, giving galactose and glucose, wouldn't the glucose from lactose cause catabolic repression?

The regulation of the lac operon, or any other catabolic genes, by glucose is a bit more complex than described by books. It is technically not glucose doing the repression.

First when glucose is present, the ATP pool is high in concentration and cAMP is low. As glucose is used and the concentration is low, the amount of ATP produce by glucose metabolism decreases and cAMP increases. When cAMP is high, it is bound by Crp (cAMP recepetor protein) and it forms cAMP-CRP complex which induce genes that require it as an inducer. As lactose is used, the ATP pool is increasing and the cAMP is decreasing. Therefore the balanced shifts from cAMP to ATP. concentration of lac mRNA will decrease partily due to the decrease of cAMP and the increase of lacI that are not bond by lactose.

So to answer your question, yes metabolisim of lactose will inhibit the lac operon eventually but most of the resources will be used by that time.

 

[ravenprp]

Hello! You bring up a great point about diauxic growth of microorganisms. As you mentioned, when both glucose and lactose are present in a medium, glucose will be preferentially utilized due to catabolic repression. However, as glucose becomes scarce, the microorganism will switch to utilizing lactose as a source of energy. This is because the induction of lactase synthesis overcomes the catabolic repression caused by the presence of glucose.

In terms of your question about glucose causing catabolic repression even when it is produced from lactose, it is important to remember that catabolic repression is a regulatory mechanism that responds to the presence of a specific sugar molecule. In this case, the presence of glucose produced from lactose would not trigger catabolic repression because it is not the initial sugar present in the medium. The microorganism is able to use this glucose without inhibiting the synthesis of lactase.

Overall, diauxic growth is a fascinating phenomenon that highlights the complex regulatory mechanisms that microorganisms have evolved to efficiently utilize different energy sources. Thank you for bringing up this interesting point and for your contribution to the discussion on diauxic growth.