SUPERVISION ETH ZURICH

This thesis focuses on the metabolic aspects of cellular adaptation processes to oxidative and iron limiting stresses. These stress conditions are generally encountered by pathogenic species upon the invasion of host organisms. It has attracted the attention of researchers and resulted in the initiation of a European project on Bacillus subtilis systems biology. This project aims at elucidating the regulatory pathways of B. subtilis under oxidative and iron stress for the subsequent application to pathogens. The present study attempts to identify and quantify the adaptations in central carbon metabolism in response to imposed stresses. Therefore a recently developed system of mini-chemostats is used as a culturing system. This setup allows a quick and economic way of culturing under many different conditions. The main finding in oxidative stress adaptations is the re-routing of carbon through the pentose phosphate pathway in order to generate NADPH. NADPH is used by processes that relief the cells of oxidative stress. Next to the productio