Table 1.

Literature data required for peptide polymerization calculations.

property	value	reference
dry mass of E. coli cell	2.8 × 10–13 g	[143]
AA mass in 1 g of dry E. coli cells	641.8 mg	calculated using data from [144]a
mass of free amino acids in E. coli cytosol	41 mg	calculated using data from [145]b
volume of an E. coli cell	1 µm3	[146]
percentage of E. coli volume regarded as aqueous	70%	[144]
mean number of AAs per protein in E. coli	278	[147]
mean number of copies of each protein in E. coli cytoplasm	3648	[148]
Gibbs energy required for de novo synthesis of all AAs in 1 g of dry E. coli cells under aerobic conditions	11.4 kJ g–1 cell	[25]
Gibbs energy required for de novo synthesis of all the AAs in 1 g of dry E. coli cells under typical anaerobic conditions	0.69 kJ g–1 cell	[25]

AA, amino acid; MW, molecular weight.

^aNeidhardt [144] gives mol of AA per gram of dried cells. This was used with MW to calculate mg of AA per gram dry cell and summed.

^bBennett et al. [145] report concentration of 17 amino acids in E. coli cytosol. These concentrations were converted to moles of each AA per dry gram using [AA] × (aqueous E. coli volume) × (cells per dry gram) × (MW of AA). The average of these 17 values was multiplied by 20 to represent the missing three AA and the 17 for which data exist.