Four products from Escherichia coli pseudogenes increase hydrogen production

Pseudogenes are considered to be nonfunctional genes that lack a physiological role. By screening 3985 Escherichia coli mutants using chemochromic membranes, we found four pseudogenes involved in hydrogen metabolism. Knockouts of pseudogenes ydfW and ypdJ had a defective hydrogen phenotype on glucose and formate, respectively. Also, the knockout of pseudogene yqiG formed hydrogen from formate but not from glucose. For the yqiG mutant, 100% hydrogen recovery was obtained by the complementation of YqiG via a plasmid. The knockout of pseudogene ylcE showed hydrogen deficiency in minimal media which suggested that the role of YlcE is associated with cell growth. Hence, the products of these four pseudogenes play an important physiological role in hydrogen production in E. coli.