Proteomic Analysis of Normal Expression Differences Exist in Bacillus Subtilis 168 Cultivation.

Biological science discovery often involves comparing conditions to a normal state, but little is known about "normal." Therefore, we used proteomic strategy to compare data from replicate samples of Bacillus subtilis 168 which were grown under identical condition. The results show that 294 differentially expressed proteins were annotated in 88 Gene Ontology functional groups and enriched in 13 KEGG pathways. We assume that normal expression differences are associated with adaptation to diverse environments. Moreover, five proteins (CotY, ThiG, SspA, SspB, and SspE) and their related genes were identified as having significantly different expressions at translational and transcriptional levels. Most of them are related to stress resistance and germination, indicating that normal expression differences can be regarded as a rapid response mechanism for survival. However, unstable protein expression may cause some fermentative problems that were observed in histidine and sulfur metabolism pathways. Our study facilitates dissection of the influence of biological variance on cultivation safety and stability.