Comparison of Metabolite Profiles of Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Depending on Minimal Vs. Complex Media

Metabolomics is one of the omics studies, which reflects global changes of the entire metabolites in various organisms. It directly shows the abundance of various metabolic intermediates of many biochemical pathways in response to genetic or environmental changes. In metabolomics studies, culture medium is one of the most important experimental factors because uptake of different nutrients dramatically alters the flux of metabolism. However, there is no studies of evaluating the effect of media on global metabolism of microorganisms. For this reason, we used gas chromatography/time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC/TOF MS) to evaluate how intracellular metabolites are differently expressed depending minimal and complex media. We identified a total of 119 intracellular metabolites and performed statistical analyses including principal component and hierachical clustering analyses. The metabolite profiles of Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae clearly showed differences between the two groups such as cells grown in minimal vs. complex media. These results suggest that the medium complexity significantly affects the overall metabolism and metabolite profiles of the cells.