Overcoming fluctuation and leakage problems in the quantification of intracellular 2-oxoglutarate levels in Escherichia coli

2-Oxoglutarate is located at the junction between central carbon and nitrogen metabolism, serving as an intermediate for both. In nitrogen metabolism, 2-oxoglutarate acts as both a carbon skeletal carrier and an effector molecule. There have been only sporadic reports of its internal concentrations. Here we describe a sensitive and accurate method for determination of the 2-oxoglutarate pool concentration in Escherichia coli. The detection was based on fluorescence derivatization followed by reversed-phase high-pressure liquid chromatography separation. Two alternative cell sampling strategies, both of which were based on a fast filtration protocol, were sequentially developed to overcome both its fast metabolism and contamination from 2-oxoglutarate that leaks into the medium. We observed rapid changes in the 2-oxoglutarate pool concentration upon sudden depletion of nutrients: decreasing upon carbon depletion and increasing upon nitrogen depletion. The latter was studied in mutants lacking either of the two enzymes using 2-oxoglutarate as the carbon substrate for glutamate biosynthesis. The results suggest that flux restriction on either reaction greatly influences the internal 2-oxoglutarate level. Additional study indicates that KgtP, a 2-oxoglutarate proton symporter, functions to recover the leakage loss of 2-oxoglutarate. This recovery mechanism benefits the measurement of cellular 2-oxoglutarate level in practice by limiting contamination from 2-oxoglutarate leakage.