★New Manuscript Alert★

Elated to share our new story published @eLife. With @AdhishW @sunillaxman & in collaboration @vaisinh @sandeepdusk from @NCBStheory

Big thanks to @India_Alliance @DBT_inStem for the generous funding

Check thread below https://elifesciences.org/articles/57609 

Previously we showed how threshold levels of certain metabolites drive specialisation in clonal yeast communities. We identified #trehalose as this magic metabolite.

Next we wanted to ask how cells growing in glucose limitation were making trehalose (2 molecules of #glucose)?

We show that #aminoacids and in particular, #aspartate acts as a “CARBON” source driving #gluconeogenesis allowing these cells to robustly produce #trehalose.

This is super cool because, #aspartate is canonically thought of as a nitrogen source in cells.

While #aspartate acts as a #carbon source to fuel gluconeogenesis in a subset of cells, it acts as a robust #nitrogen source to fuel nucleotide biosynthesis in another subset of cells.

This metabolic plasticity of #aspartate is what drives this specialisation so effectively.

Each metabolic specialisation allows the colony as a whole to thrive.

Gluconeogenenic cells handle environmental stresses superbly while the glycolytic cells proliferate rapidly allowing the yeast colony to forage efficiently.

This Division of Labor is remarkably effective.

This study was an awesome collaborative effort between @DBT_inStem @NCBS_Bangalore @NCBStheory. We used a combination of scientific techniques including:

1) Yeast genetics
2) Microscopy
3) Mass spectrometry
4) Computational modelling

Big thanks to @India_Alliance for funding

Finally, @catchpreethir made this wonderful image which beautifully conveys the crux of this story.

#Aspartate is amazing and is at the heart of this cool phenomenon.

Hope you all enjoyed this thread. Comments/Feedback for this story are most welcome

Check out @sunillaxman thread for more insights and a link to our earlier study in @eLife

Reviews from @eLife where very constructive and we really enjoyed the whole process from submission to acceptance https://twitter.com/sunillaxman/status/1301403895172706310