BioCyc promoter database Updated +Created
E. Coli K-12 MG1655 Updated +Created
NCBI taxonomy entry: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser/wwwtax.cgi?id=511145 This links to:
  • genome: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/?term=txid511145 From there there are links to either:
    • Download the FASTA: "Download sequences in FASTA format for genome, protein"
      For the genome, you get a compressed FASTA file with extension .fna called GCF_000005845.2_ASM584v2_genomic.fna that starts with:
      >NC_000913.3 Escherichia coli str. K-12 substr. MG1655, complete genome
      AGCTTTTCATTCTGACTGCAACGGGCAATATGTCTCTGTGTGGATTAAAAAAAGAGTGTCTGATAGCAGCTTCTGAACTG
      Using wc as in wc GCF_000005845.2_ASM584v2_genomic.fna gives 58022 lines, in Vim we see that each line is 80 characters, except for the final one which is 52. So we have 58020 * 80 + 52 = 4641652 =~ 4.6 Mbp
E. Coli K-12 MG1655 gene thrL Updated +Created
The first gene in the E. Coli K-12 MG1655 genome. Remember however that bacterial chromosome is circular, so being the first doesn't mean much, how the choice was made: Section "E. Coli genome starting point".
At only 65 bp, this gene is quite small and boring. For a more interesting gene, have a look at the next gene, e. Coli K-12 MG1655 gene thrA.
Does something to do with threonine.
This is the first in the sequence thrL, thrA, thrB, thrC. This type of naming convention is quite common on related adjacent proteins, all of which must be getting transcribed into a single RNA by the same promoter. As mentioned in the analysis of the KEGG entry for e. Coli K-12 MG1655 gene thrA, those A, B and C are actually directly functionally linked in a direct metabolic pathway.
We can see that thrL, A, B, and C are in the same transcription unit by browsing the list of promoter at: biocyc.org/group?id=:ALL-PROMOTERS&orgid=ECOLI. By finding the first one by position we reach; biocyc.org/ECOLI/NEW-IMAGE?object=TU0-42486.
E. Coli K-12 MG1655 operon thrLABC Updated +Created
We can find it by searching for the species in the BioCyc promoter database. This leads to: biocyc.org/group?id=:ALL-PROMOTERS&orgid=ECOLI.
By finding the first operon by position we reach: biocyc.org/ECOLI/NEW-IMAGE?object=TU0-42486.
That page lists several components of the promoter, which we should try to understand!
After the first gene in the codon, thrL, there is a rho-independent termination. By comparing:we understand that the presence of threonine or isoleucine variants, L-threonyl and L-isoleucyl, makes the rho-independent termination become more efficient, so the control loop is quite direct! Not sure why it cares about isoleucine as well though.
TODO which factor is actually specific to that DNA region?
Source code overview Updated +Created
The key model database is located in the source code at reconstruction/ecoli/flat.
Let's try to understand some interesting looking, with a special focus on our understanding of the tiny E. Coli K-12 MG1655 operon thrLABC part of the metabolism, which we have well understood at Section "E. Coli K-12 MG1655 operon thrLABC".
We'll realize that a lot of data and IDs come from/match BioCyc quite closely.
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/compartments.tsv contains cellular compartment information:
    "abbrev" "id"
    "n" "CCO-BAC-NUCLEOID"
    "j" "CCO-CELL-PROJECTION"
    "w" "CCO-CW-BAC-NEG"
    "c" "CCO-CYTOSOL"
    "e" "CCO-EXTRACELLULAR"
    "m" "CCO-MEMBRANE"
    "o" "CCO-OUTER-MEM"
    "p" "CCO-PERI-BAC"
    "l" "CCO-PILUS"
    "i" "CCO-PM-BAC-NEG"
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/promoters.tsv contains promoter information. Simple file, sample lines:
    "position" "direction" "id" "name"
    148 "+" "PM00249" "thrLp"
    corresponds to E. Coli K-12 MG1655 promoter thrLp, which starts as position 148.
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/proteins.tsv contains protein information. Sample line corresponding to e. Coli K-12 MG1655 gene thrA:
    "aaCount" "name" "seq" "comments" "codingRnaSeq" "mw" "location" "rnaId" "id" "geneId"
    [91, 46, 38, 44, 12, 53, 30, 63, 14, 46, 89, 34, 23, 30, 29, 51, 34, 4, 20, 0, 69] "ThrA" "MRVL..." "Location information from Ecocyc dump." "AUGCGAGUGUUG..." [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 89103.51099999998, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0] ["c"] "EG10998_RNA" "ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-MONOMER" "EG10998"
    so we understand that:
    • aaCount: amino acid count, how many of each of the 20 proteinogenic amino acid are there
    • seq: full sequence, using the single letter abbreviation of the proteinogenic amino acids
    • mw; molecular weight? The 11 components appear to be given at reconstruction/ecoli/flat/scripts/unifyBulkFiles.py:
      molecular_weight_keys = [
        '23srRNA',
        '16srRNA',
        '5srRNA',
        'tRNA',
        'mRNA',
        'miscRNA',
        'protein',
        'metabolite',
        'water',
        'DNA',
        'RNA' # nonspecific RNA
        ]
      so they simply classify the weight? Presumably this exists for complexes that have multiple classes?
    • location: cell compartment where the protein is present, c defined at reconstruction/ecoli/flat/compartments.tsv as cytoplasm, as expected for something that will make an amino acid
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/rnas.tsv: TODO vs transcriptionUnits.tsv. Sample lines:
    "halfLife" "name" "seq" "type" "modifiedForms" "monomerId" "comments" "mw" "location" "ntCount" "id" "geneId" "microarray expression"
    174.0 "ThrA [RNA]" "AUGCGAGUGUUG..." "mRNA" [] "ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-MONOMER" "" [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 790935.00399999996, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0] ["c"] [553, 615, 692, 603] "EG10998_RNA" "EG10998" 0.0005264904
    • halfLife: half-life
    • mw: molecular weight, same as in reconstruction/ecoli/flat/proteins.tsv. This molecule only have weight in the mRNA class, as expected, as it just codes for a protein
    • location: same as in reconstruction/ecoli/flat/proteins.tsv
    • ntCount: nucleotide count for each of the ATGC
    • microarray expression: presumably refers to DNA microarray for gene expression profiling, but what measure exactly?
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/sequence.fasta: FASTA DNA sequence, first two lines:
    >E. coli K-12 MG1655 U00096.2 (1 to 4639675 = 4639675 bp)
    AGCTTTTCATTCTGACTGCAACGGGCAATATGTCTCTGTGTGGATTAAAAAAAGAGTGTCTGATAGCAGCTTCTG
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/transcriptionUnits.tsv: transcription units. We can observe for example the two different transcription units of the E. Coli K-12 MG1655 operon thrLABC in the lines:
    "expression_rate" "direction" "right" "terminator_id"  "name"    "promoter_id" "degradation_rate" "id"       "gene_id"                                   "left"
    0.0               "f"         310     ["TERM0-1059"]   "thrL"    "PM00249"     0.198905992329492 "TU0-42486" ["EG11277"]                                  148
    657.057317358791  "f"         5022    ["TERM_WC-2174"] "thrLABC" "PM00249"     0.231049060186648 "TU00178"   ["EG10998", "EG10999", "EG11000", "EG11277"] 148
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/genes.tsv
    "length" "name"                      "seq"             "rnaId"      "coordinate" "direction" "symbol" "type" "id"      "monomerId"
    66       "thr operon leader peptide" "ATGAAACGCATT..." "EG11277_RNA" 189         "+"         "thrL"   "mRNA" "EG11277" "EG11277-MONOMER"
    2463     "ThrA"                      "ATGCGAGTGTTG"    "EG10998_RNA" 336         "+"         "thrA"   "mRNA" "EG10998" "ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-MONOMER"
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/metabolites.tsv contains metabolite information. Sample lines:
    "id"                       "mw7.2" "location"
    "HOMO-SER"                 119.12  ["n", "j", "w", "c", "e", "m", "o", "p", "l", "i"]
    "L-ASPARTATE-SEMIALDEHYDE" 117.104 ["n", "j", "w", "c", "e", "m", "o", "p", "l", "i"]
    In the case of the enzyme thrA, one of the two reactions it catalyzes is "L-aspartate 4-semialdehyde" into "Homoserine".
    Starting from the enzyme page: biocyc.org/gene?orgid=ECOLI&id=EG10998 we reach the reaction page: biocyc.org/ECOLI/NEW-IMAGE?type=REACTION&object=HOMOSERDEHYDROG-RXN which has reaction ID HOMOSERDEHYDROG-RXN, and that page which clarifies the IDs:
    so these are the compounds that we care about.
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/reactions.tsv contains chemical reaction information. Sample lines:
    "reaction id" "stoichiometry" "is reversible" "catalyzed by"
    
    "HOMOSERDEHYDROG-RXN-HOMO-SER/NAD//L-ASPARTATE-SEMIALDEHYDE/NADH/PROTON.51."
      {"NADH[c]": -1, "PROTON[c]": -1, "HOMO-SER[c]": 1, "L-ASPARTATE-SEMIALDEHYDE[c]": -1, "NAD[c]": 1}
      false
      ["ASPKINIIHOMOSERDEHYDROGII-CPLX", "ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-CPLX"]
    
    "HOMOSERDEHYDROG-RXN-HOMO-SER/NADP//L-ASPARTATE-SEMIALDEHYDE/NADPH/PROTON.53."
      {"NADPH[c]": -1, "NADP[c]": 1, "PROTON[c]": -1, "L-ASPARTATE-SEMIALDEHYDE[c]": -1, "HOMO-SER[c]": 1
      false
      ["ASPKINIIHOMOSERDEHYDROGII-CPLX", "ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-CPLX"]
    • catalized by: here we see ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-CPLX, which we can guess is a protein complex made out of ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-MONOMER, which is the ID for the thrA we care about! This is confirmed in complexationReactions.tsv.
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/complexationReactions.tsv contains information about chemical reactions that produce protein complexes:
    "process" "stoichiometry" "id" "dir"
    "complexation"
      [
        {
          "molecule": "ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-CPLX",
          "coeff": 1,
          "type": "proteincomplex",
          "location": "c",
          "form": "mature"
        },
        {
          "molecule": "ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-MONOMER",
          "coeff": -4,
          "type": "proteinmonomer",
          "location": "c",
          "form": "mature"
        }
      ]
    "ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-CPLX_RXN"
    1
    The coeff is how many monomers need to get together for form the final complex. This can be seen from the Summary section of ecocyc.org/gene?orgid=ECOLI&id=ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-MONOMER:
    Aspartate kinase I / homoserine dehydrogenase I comprises a dimer of ThrA dimers. Although the dimeric form is catalytically active, the binding equilibrium dramatically favors the tetrameric form. The aspartate kinase and homoserine dehydrogenase activities of each ThrA monomer are catalyzed by independent domains connected by a linker region.
    Fantastic literature summary! Can't find that in database form there however.
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/proteinComplexes.tsv contains protein complex information:
    "name" "comments" "mw" "location" "reactionId" "id"
    "aspartate kinase / homoserine dehydrogenase"
    ""
    [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 356414.04399999994, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
    ["c"]
    "ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-CPLX_RXN"
    "ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-CPLX"
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/protein_half_lives.tsv contains the half-life of proteins. Very few proteins are listed however for some reason.
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/tfIds.csv: transcription factors information:
    "TF"   "geneId"  "oneComponentId"  "twoComponentId" "nonMetaboliteBindingId" "activeId" "notes"
    "arcA" "EG10061" "PHOSPHO-ARCA"    "PHOSPHO-ARCA"
    "fnr"  "EG10325" "FNR-4FE-4S-CPLX" "FNR-4FE-4S-CPLX"
    "dksA" "EG10230"
Enzyme Updated +Created
A protein that is a catalyst for some chemical reaction.
For an initial concrete example, consider e. Coli K-12 MG1655 gene thrA.
Video 1.
How Enzymes Work by RCSBProteinDataBank (2017)
Source. Shows in detail how aconitase catalyses the citrate to isocitrate reaction in the citric acid cycle.
KEGG Updated +Created
For a commented initial example, see: e. Coli K-12 MG1655 gene thrA.
KEGG does the visual maps well.
But BioCyc is generally better otherwise.
Polycistronic mRNA Updated +Created
UniProt Updated +Created
For an example with context, have a look at E. Coli K-12 MG1655 and the second protein of the genome, e. Coli K-12 MG1655 gene thrA.