The influence of metabolic network structures and energy metabolic pattern on E. coli K12 exposed to acoustic field: based on Gene Ontology and KEGG pathway enrichment analysis

Microorganism is an important part of ecosystems; it is very sensitive to environmental change. In order to study the effects of sound on organisms, it’s meaningful to study mechanism of microbial exposure to sound. In our previous experiments, the effects of different sound intensity and frequency on the growth of E. coli K12 were studied. It was found that in stationary phase the bacteria concentration of sound expose group was higher than control. In this study, we aimed to understand the mechanisms of E. coli underlying sound expose by using Gene Ontology and KEGG Pathway Enrichment Analysis, and established a systematic pathway for the E. coli response to sound expose. At 6 hour, the chemotaxis pathway was significantly up-regulated which responses to the changes of the external environment and leads bacteria to favorable environment. At 12 hour, the glycerophospholipid pathway was significant up-regulated, it is related to the energy metabolism and cell division. At 24 hours, the energy metabolism, nucleotide synthesis and transcriptional translation pathways were significant differences. When bacteria entered the stationary phase (36 hour), in sound exposure group the pathways related to reduce the harmful substances were down-regulated and the pathways about degrade aromatic compounds provides energy were up-regulated, so that the E. coli K12 in sound exposure have a better ability to adapt poor living environment. Comparative transcriptome analysis of sound exposed E. coli K12 can not only reveal the behavior of E. coli K12 response to sound expose, but also lay a foundation for further study the mechanism of prokaryotes response to physical stimulus.