Molecular Research of Escherichia coli K-12
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Microbiology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 April 2024) | Viewed by 6644
Special Issue Editors
2. Institute of Biosciences, University Research Center of Ioannina (URCI), Ioannina, Greece
Interests: transport proteins; nucleobase/nucleoside permeases; structure-function relationships; Cys-scanning analysis; evolution-specificity relationships; enterobacteria
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
E. coli is such an every-day asset in the modern molecular biology lab as a host for genetic engineering and biotechnology purposes that its own validity as a model organism is often overlooked or underestimated by peers working on mammalian or other eukaryotic systems. Most major breakthroughs in molecular biology trace back to research with E. coli laboratory strains, most prominently of the E. coli K-12 and E. coli B lineages. The E. coli K-12 lineage in particular played a key role in the establishment of E. coli as a model organism. The year 2022 is the centenary year of the isolation of E. coli K-12 at Stanford University. With a well-defined history encompassing thousands of different derivative strains, E. coli K-12 was instrumental in the development of the molecular biology field. It also provided one of the first genomes to be sequenced, 25 years ago—a major milestone in the field of genomics. As a reference for more than 140,000 E. coli genomes that are publicly available to date, E. coli K-12 facilitates the study of various aspects of gene and protein function, interactions and regulatory networks in the phenotypically diverse group of E. coli, but also in other Enterobacterales and other related bacteria. It also continues to provide us with research surprises, on new, previously undescribed metabolic operons, gene regulatory networks and response regulation systems, but also in fields with more obvious connection to generally applicable molecular biology ideas, such as experimental evolution, asymmetric cell division, and stochasticity in gene expression or RNA-based regulation, to name a few. Despite a wealth of bioinformatic data, there are still many E. coli genes with few or no functional information available. Experimental evidence of function is lacking for about one-third of the E. coli K-12 genes. Even with less-stringent criteria, one-fourth of the genes are poorly known phylogenetically (not connected to KEGG orthology or to a COG) and around one-tenth, even in the best-studied E. coli K-12 genomes, remain annotated as “orphans” (without function prediction). The frequent persisting usage of y-based names for E. coli genes reflects this situation clearly. In this Special Issue, we aim to collect original research and review articles on the function of newly characterized gene products or gene and gene–product interactions in metabolic and regulatory processes and the structural/conformational underpinnings of such processes in E. coli K-12, in celebration of the centennial of its appearance on the scientific scene.
Prof. Dr. Stathis Frillingos
Dr. Ekaterini Tatsaki
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- Escherichia coli
- proteobacteria
- genome
- gene function
- gene regulation
- y-based names
- de-orphanization
- centennial
