Why does Escherichia coli grow more slowly on glucosamine than on N-acetylglucosamine?
Wild-type Escherichia coli grows more slowly on glucosamine (GlcN) than on N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) as a sole source of carbon. Both sugars are transported by the phosphotransferase system, and their 6-phospho derivatives are produced. The subsequent catabolism of the sugars requires the allosteric enzyme glucosamine-6-phosphate (GlcN6P) deaminase, which is encoded by nagB, and degradation of GlcNAc also requires the nagA-encoded enzyme, N-acetylglucosamine-6-phosphate (GlcNAc6P) deacetylase. We investigated various factors which could affect growth on GlcN and GlcNAc, including the rate of GlcN uptake, the level of induction of the nag operon, and differential allosteric activation of GlcN6P deaminase. We found that for strains carrying a wild-type deaminase (nagB) gene, increasing the level of the NagB protein or the rate of GlcN uptake increased the growth rate, which showed that both enzyme induction and sugar transport were limiting. A set of point mutations in nagB that are k
