On the feasibility of growth-coupled product synthesis in microbial strains

Enforcing obligate coupling of growth with synthesis of a desired product has become a key principle for metabolic engineering of microbial production strains. Various methods from stoichiometric and constraint-based modeling have been developed to calculate intervention strategies by which a given microorganism can only grow if it synthesizes a desired compound as a mandatory by-product. However, growth-coupled synthesis is not necessarily feasible for every compound of a metabolic network and no rigorous criterion is currently known to test feasibility of coupled product and biomass formation (before searching for suitable intervention strategies). In this work, we show which properties a network must fulfill such that strain designs guaranteeing coupled biomass and product synthesis can exist at all. In networks without flux bounds, coupling is feasible if and only if an elementary mode exists that leads to formation of both biomass and product. Setting flux boundaries leads to more complicated inhomogeneous problems. Making use of the concept of elementary (flux) vectors, a generalization of elementary modes, a criterion for feasibility can also be derived for this situation. We applied our criteria to a metabolic model of Escherichia coli and determined for each metabolite, whether its net production can be coupled with biomass synthesis and calculated the maximal (guaranteed) coupling yield. The somewhat surprising result is that, under aerobic conditions, coupling is indeed possible for each carbon metabolite of the central metabolism. This also holds true for most metabolites under anaerobic conditions but consideration of ATP maintenance requirements implies infeasibility of coupling for certain compounds. On the other hand, ATP maintenance may also increase the maximal coupling yield for some metabolites. Overall, our work provides important insights and novel tools for a central problem of computational strain design.