Nuclear Magnetic Resonance for Analysis of Metabolite Composition of Escherichia Coli

A series of high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopic methods were employed to qualitatively and quantitatively analyze the endogenous metabolite composition of Escherichia coli, an important model organism. The results showed that E. coli metabolome was dominated by more than 40 abundant metabolites, including amino acids, organic acids, sugars, nucleic aides and their derivatives involving a number of different metabolic pathways. Glucose level is the highest in the stationary-phase E. coli while glutamate, betaine, putrescine and ribose-5-phosphate levels are higher than the other metabolites. These findings indicated that such methods were effective in simultaneously detecting the abundant bacterial metabolites with different polarity, including both the primary and secondary metabolites.