Metabolic heterogeneity between individual cells of a population harbors offers significantchallenges for fundamental and applied research. Identifying metabolic heterogeneity and investigating its emergence requires tools to zoom into metabolism of individual cells.While methods exist to measure metabolite levels in single cells, we lack capability to measure metabolic flux, i.e. the ultimate functional output of metabolic activity, on the single-cell level. Here, combining promoter engineering, computational protein design, biochemical methods, proteomics and metabolomics, we developed a biosensor to measure glycolytic flux in single yeast cells, by drawing on the robust cell-intrinsic correlation between glycolytic flux and levels of fructose-1,6-bisphosphate (FBP), and by transplanting the B. subtilis FBP-binding transcription factor CggR into yeast. As proof of principle, using fluorescence microscopy, we applied the sensor to identify metabolic subpopulations in yeast cultures. We anticipate that our biosensor will become a valuable tool to identify and study metabolic heterogeneity in cell populations. perform flux-dependent regulation 29,30 . Biosensors for such metabolites, such as recently accomplished for E. coli 31 , would in principle allow for measurement of metabolic fluxes in single cells, in combination with microscopy or flow cytometry.Here, drawing on glycolytic flux-signalling metabolite fructose-1,6-bisphosphate (FBP) levels in yeast 30 and using the B. subtilis FBP-binding transcription factor CggR 32,33 , we developed a biosensor, which allows to measure glycolytic flux in single yeast cells. To this end, we used computational protein design, biochemical, proteome and metabolome analyses, for (i) the development of a synthetic yeast promoter regulated by the bacterial transcriptional factor CggR, (ii) the engineering of the transcription factors' FBP binding site towards increasing the sensor's dynamic range, and (iii) the establishment of growthindependent CggR expression levels. We demonstrate the applicability of the biosensor for flow cytometry and time-lapse fluorescence microscopy. We envision that the biosensor will open new avenues for both fundamental and applied metabolic research, not only for monitoring glycolytic flux, but also for engineering control circuits with glycolytic flux as input variable.
Results
Design of biosensor conceptFor our biosensor, we exploited the fact that the level of the glycolytic intermediate fructose-1,6-biphosphate (FBP) in yeast 30,34 , similar to other organisms 27 , strongly correlates with the glycolysis flux 28,34,35 , and that changing FBP levels exert fluxdependent regulation. In B. subtilis, for instance, FBP binds to the transcription factor (TF) CggR 33 , which when bound to its target DNA forms a tetrameric assembly of two dimers, through which transcription gets inhibited 36 . Upon binding of FBP to the CggR-DNA complex, the dimer-dimer contacts of CggR are disrupted, and the promoter is derepressed 37 .Here, we aimed to transplant the B...