Regulation of lipid polymorphism is essential for the viability of phosphatidylethanolamine-deficient Escherichia coli cells.

Escherichia coli strain AD93 is unable to synthesize the nonbilayer lipid phosphatidylethanolamine and requires high concentrations of specific divalent cations for growth. Previous studies suggested that in this strain, cardiolipin in combination with divalent cations functionally replaces phosphatidylethanolamine, reflecting polymorphic regulation of membrane lipid composition. However, it is also possible that divalent cations are required for regulation of lipid packing or membrane surface potential. 2H NMR was employed to measure the effect of different divalent cations on lipid packing in aqueous dispersions of lipid extracts isolated from AD93 and the wild type parental strain W3899, which were grown with [11,11-2H2]oleic acid. The results indicate that a range of acyl chain order is compatible with growth and that Ba2+, which cannot support growth of AD93, can increase chain packing to the wild type level. By means of microelectrophoresis, it was shown that the growth-promoting cations and Ba2+ have a strong and comparable ability to screen the surface charge of large unilamellar vesicles prepared from AD93 lipid extracts. Therefore, it is unlikely that the growth-promoting capacity of divalent cations is primarily due to their effect on lipid packing or their potency to decrease the surface potential. Furthermore, the addition of small amounts of Ba2+ to a AD93 lipid dispersion with excess Mg2+ diminished HII phase formation. This observation can explain the growth arrest in AD93 cultures upon the addition of Ba2+ and further supports the conclusion that the cation requirement of this strain arises mainly from polymorphic regulation of lipid composition.