Clostridium sporogenes uses reductive Stickland metabolism in the gut to generate ATP and produce circulating metabolites

Gut bacteria face a key problem in how they capture enough energy needed to sustain their growth and physiology. The gut bacterium Clostridium sporogenes obtains its energy by utilizing amino acids in pairs, coupling the oxidation of one to the reduction of another – the Stickland reaction. Oxidative pathways produce ATP via substrate level phosphorylation, whereas reductive pathways are thought to balance redox. Here, we investigated whether these reductive pathways are also linked to energy generation and the production of microbial metabolites that may circulate and impact host physiology. Using metabolomics, we find that during growth in vitro, C. sporogenes produces 15 metabolites, 13 of which are present in the gut of C. sporogenes colonized mice. Four of these compounds are reductive Stickland metabolites that circulate in the blood of gnotobiotic mice and are also detected in plasma from healthy humans. Gene clusters for reductive Stickland pathways suggest involvement of electron transfer proteins, and experiments in vitro demonstrate that reductive metabolism is coupled to ATP formation and not just redox balance. Genetic analysis points to the broadly conserved Rnf complex as a key coupling site for energy transduction. Rnf complex mutants show aberrant amino acid metabolism in defined medium and are attenuated for growth in the mouse gut, demonstrating a role of the Rnf complex in Stickland metabolism and gut colonization. Our findings reveal that the production of circulating metabolites by a commensal bacterium within the host gut is linked to an ATP-yielding redox process.