"Hot standards" for the thermoacidophilic archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus.

Within the archaea, the thermoacidophilic crenarchaeote Sulfolobus solfataricus has become an important model organism for physiology and biochemistry, comparative and functional genomics, as well as, more recently also for systems biology approaches. Within the Sulfolobus Systems Biology ("SulfoSYS")-project the effect of changing growth temperatures on a metabolic network is investigated at the systems level by integrating genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic and enzymatic information for production of a silicon cell-model. The network under investigation is the central carbohydrate metabolism. The generation of high-quality quantitative data, which is critical for the investigation of biological systems and the successful integration of the different datasets, derived for example from high-throughput approaches (e.g., transcriptome or proteome analyses), requires the application and compliance of uniform standard protocols, e.g., for growth and handling of the organism as well as the "-omics" approaches. Here, we report on the establishment and implementation of standard operating procedures for the different wet-lab and in silico techniques that are applied within the SulfoSYS-project and that we believe can be useful for future projects on Sulfolobus or (hyper)thermophiles in general. Beside established techniques, it includes new methodologies like strain surveillance, the improved identification of membrane proteins and the application of crenarchaeal metabolomics.

SulfoSYS (Sulfolobus Systems Biology): towards a silicon cell model for the central carbohydrate metabolism of the archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus under temperature variation.

SulfoSYS (Sulfolobus Systems Biology) focuses on the study of the CCM (central carbohydrate metabolism) of Sulfolobus solfataricus and its regulation under temperature variation at the systems level. In Archaea, carbohydrates are metabolized by modifications of the classical pathways known from Bacteria or Eukarya, e.g. the unusual branched ED (Entner-Doudoroff) pathway, which is utilized for glucose degradation in S. solfataricus. This archaeal model organism of choice is a thermoacidophilic crenarchaeon that optimally grows at 80 degrees C (60-92 degrees C) and pH 2-4. In general, life at high temperature requires very efficient adaptation to temperature changes, which is most difficult to deal with for organisms, and it is unclear how biological networks can withstand and respond to such changes. This integrative project combines genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic, as well as kinetic and biochemical information. The final goal of SulfoSYS is the construction of a silicon cell model for this part of the living cell that will enable computation of the CCM network. In the present paper, we report on one of the first archaeal systems biology projects.