Extremely rapid acclimation of Escherichia coli to high temperature over a few generations of a fed-batch culture during slow warming

This study aimed to demonstrate that adequate slow heating rate allows two strains of Escherichia coli rapid acclimation to higher temperature than upper growth and survival limits known to be strain-dependent. A laboratory (K12-TG1) and an environmental (DPD3084) strain of E. coli were subjected to rapid (few seconds) or slow warming (1°C 12 h(-1)) in order to (re)evaluate upper survival and growth limits. The slow warming was applied from the ancestral temperature 37°C to total cell death 46-54°C: about 30 generations were propagated. Upper survival and growth limits for rapid warming (46°C) were lower than for slow warming (46-54°C). The thermal limit of survival for slow warming was higher for DPD3084 (50-54°C). Further experiments conducted on DPD3084, showed that mechanisms involved in this type of thermotolerance were abolished by a following cooling step to 37°C, which allowed to imply reversible mechanisms as acclimation ones. Acquisition of acclimation mechanisms was related to physical properties of the plasma membrane but was not inhibited by unavoidable appearance of aggregated proteins. In conclusion, E.coli could be rapidly acclimated within few generations over thermal limits described in the literature. Such a study led us to propose that rapid acclimation may give supplementary time to the species to acquire a stable adaptation through a random mutation.