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Corynebacterium glutamicum mechanosensitive channels: towards unpuzzling “glutamate efflux” for amino acid production

Biophysical Reviews volume 10, pages 1359–1369 (2018)Cite this article

Abstract

Corynebacterium glutamicum has been utilized for industrial amino acid production, especially for monosodium glutamate (MSG), the food-additive for the “UMAMI” category of taste sensation, which is one of the five human basic tastes. Glutamate export from these cells is facilitated by the opening of mechanosensitive channels in the cell membrane within the bacterial cell envelope following specific treatments, such as biotin limitation, addition of Tween 40 or penicillin. A long-unsolved puzzle still remains how and why C. glutamicum mechanosensitive channels are activated by these treatments to export glutamate. Unlike mechanosensitive channels in other bacteria, these channels are not simply osmotic safety valves that prevent these bacteria from bursting upon a hypo-osmotic shock. They also function as metabolic valves to continuously release glutamate as components of a pump-and-leak mechanism regulating the cellular turgor pressure. Recent studies have demonstrated that the opening of the mechanosensitive channel, MscCG, mainly facilitates the efflux of glutamate and not of other amino acids and that the “force-from-lipids” gating mechanism of channels also applies to the MscCG channel. The bacterial types of mechanosensitive channels are found in cell-walled organisms from bacteria to land plants, where their physiological functions have been specialized beyond their basic function in bacterial osmoregulation. In the case of the C. glutamicum MscCG channels, they have evolved to function as specialized glutamate exporters.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the Japanese Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) for a fellowship to YN, and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia for a Principal Research Fellowship to BM.

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Affiliations

  1. Molecular Cardiology and Biophysics Division, Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, 405 Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst, NSW, 2010, Australia

    Yoshitaka Nakayama & Boris Martinac

  2. Department of Green and Sustainable Chemistry, Tokyo Denki University, 5 Asahi-cho, Senju, Adachi-ku, Tokyo, 120-8551, Japan

    Ken-ichi Hashimoto & Hisashi Kawasaki

  3. Mechanobiology Laboratory, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, 65 Tsurumai-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya, 466-8550, Japan

    Yasuyuki Sawada & Masahiro Sokabe

  4. St Vincent’s Clinical School, Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, Darlinghurst, NSW, 2010, Australia

    Boris Martinac

Authors
  1. Yoshitaka Nakayama
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  2. Ken-ichi Hashimoto
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  3. Yasuyuki Sawada
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  4. Masahiro Sokabe
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  5. Hisashi Kawasaki
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  6. Boris Martinac
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Contributions

Y. N., Y. S., H. K., and B. M. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yoshitaka Nakayama.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Discovery Project DP180102813 grant from the Australian Research Council.

Conflict of interest

Yoshitaka Nakayama declares that he has no conflicts of interest. Ken-ichi Hashimoto declares that he has no conflicts of interest. Yasuyuki Sawada declares that he has no conflicts of interest. Masahiro Sokabe declares that he has no conflicts of interest. Hisashi Kawasaki declares that he has no conflicts of interest. Boris Martinac declares that he has no conflicts of interest.

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Nakayama, Y., Hashimoto, Ki., Sawada, Y. et al. Corynebacterium glutamicum mechanosensitive channels: towards unpuzzling “glutamate efflux” for amino acid production. Biophys Rev 10, 1359–1369 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12551-018-0452-1

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Keywords

  • Corynebacterium glutamicum
  • Mechanosensitive channel
  • Osmoregulation
  • Glutamate production
  • MscCG
  • Volume regulation