Resource Reallocation in Bacteria by Reengineering the Gene Expression Machinery

Bacteria have evolved complex regulatory networks to control the activity of transcription and translation, and thus the growth rate, over a range of environmental conditions. Reengineering RNA polymerase and ribosomes allows modifying naturally evolved regulatory networks and thereby profoundly reorganizing the manner in which bacteria allocate resources to different cellular functions. This opens new opportunities for our fundamental understanding of microbial physiology and for a variety of applications. Recent breakthroughs in genome engineering and the miniaturization and automation of culturing methods have offered new perspectives for the reengineering of the transcription and translation machinery in bacteria as well as the development of novel in vitro and in vivo gene expression systems. We review different examples from the unifying perspective of resource reallocation, and discuss the impact of these approaches for microbial systems biology and biotechnological applications.