Structure-Guided Engineering of α-Keto Acid Decarboxylase for the Production of Higher Alcohols at Elevated Temperature

Development of a Highly Selective NAD+ -Dependent Glyceraldehyde Dehydrogenase and its Application in Minimal Cell-Free Enzyme Cascades

Anthropogenic climate change has been caused by over-exploitation of fossil fuels and CO2 emissions. To counteract this, the chemical industry has shifted its focus to sustainable chemical production and the valorization of renewable resources. However, the biggest challenges in biomanufacturing are technical efficiency and profitability. In our minimal cell-free enzyme cascade generating pyruvate as the central intermediate, the NAD+ -dependent, selective oxidation of D-glyceraldehyde was identified as a key reaction step to improve the overall cascade flux. Successive genome mining identified one candidate enzyme with 24-fold enhanced activity and another whose stability is unaffected in 10 % (v/v) ethanol, the final product of our model cascade. Semi-rational engineering improved the substrate selectivity of the enzyme up to 21-fold, thus minimizing side reactions in the one-pot enzyme cascade. The final biotransformation of D-glucose showed a continuous linear production of ethanol (via pyruvate) to a final titer of 4.9 % (v/v) with a molar product yield of 98.7 %. Due to the central role of pyruvate in diverse biotransformations, the optimized production module has great potential for broad biomanufacturing applications.

Structure-guided engineering of branched-chain α-keto acid decarboxylase for improved 1,2,4-butanetriol production by in vitro synthetic enzymatic biosystem

Efficient synthetic routes for biomanufacturing chemicals often require the overcoming of pathway bottlenecks by tailoring enzymes to improve the catalytic efficiency or even implement non-native activities. 1,2,4-butanetriol (BTO), a valuable commodity chemical, is currently biosynthesized from D-xylose via a four-enzyme reaction cascade, with the ThDP-dependent α-keto acid decarboxylase (KdcA) identified as the potential bottleneck. Here, to further enhance the catalytic activity of KdcA toward the non-native substrate α-keto-3-deoxy-xylonate (KDX), in silico screening and structure-guided evolution were performed. The best mutants, S286L/G402P and V461K, exhibited a 1.8- and 2.5-fold higher enzymatic activity in the conversion of KDX to 3,4-dihydroxybutanal when compared to KdcA, respectively. MD simulations revealed that the two sets of mutations reshaped the substrate binding pocket, thereby increasing the binding affinity for KDX and promoting interactions between KDX and cofactor ThDP. Then, when the V461K mutant instead of wild type KdcA was integrated into the enzyme cascade, a 1.9-fold increase in BTO titer was observed. After optimization of the reaction conditions, the enzyme cocktail contained V461K converted 60 g/L D-xylose to 22.1 g/L BTO with a yield of 52.1 %. This work illustrated that protein engineering is a powerful tool for modifying the output of metabolic pathway.

Enlightening the Path to Protein Engineering: Chemoselective Turn-On Probes for High-Throughput Screening of Enzymatic Activity

Many successful stories in enzyme engineering are based on the creation of randomized diversity in large mutant libraries, containing millions to billions of enzyme variants. Methods that enabled their evaluation with high throughput are dominated by spectroscopic techniques due to their high speed and sensitivity. A large proportion of studies relies on fluorogenic substrates that mimic the chemical properties of the target or coupled enzymatic assays with an optical read-out that assesses the desired catalytic efficiency indirectly. The most reliable hits, however, are achieved by screening for conversions of the starting material to the desired product. For this purpose, functional group assays offer a general approach to achieve a fast, optical read-out. They use the chemoselectivity, differences in electronic and steric properties of various functional groups, to reduce the number of false-positive results and the analytical noise stemming from enzymatic background activities. This review summarizes the developments and use of functional group probes for chemoselective derivatizations, with a clear focus on screening for enzymatic activity in protein engineering.

Integrating Carbohydrate and C1 Utilization for Chemicals Production

In the face of increasing mobility and energy demand, as well as the mitigation of climate change, the development of sustainable and environmentally friendly alternatives to fossil fuels will be one of the most important tasks facing humankind in the coming years. In order to initiate the transition from a petroleum-based economy to a new, greener future, biofuels and synthetic fuels have great potential as they can be adapted to already common processes. Thereby, especially synthetic fuels from CO₂ and renewable energies are seen as the next big step for a sustainable and ecological life. In our study, we directly address the sustainable production of the most common biofuel, ethanol, and the highly interesting next-generation biofuel, isobutanol, from methanol and xylose, which are directly derivable from CO₂ and lignocellulosic waste streams, respectively, such integrating synthetic fuel and biofuel production. After enzyme and reaction optimization, we succeeded in producing either 3 g L^-1 ethanol or 2 g L^-1 isobutanol from 7.5 g L^-1 xylose and 1.6 g L^-1 methanol. In our cell-free enzyme system, C1-compounds are efficiently combined and fixed by the key enzyme transketolase and converted to the intermediate pyruvate. This opens the way for a hybrid production of biofuels, platform chemicals and fine chemicals from CO₂ and lignocellulosic waste streams as alternative to conventional routes depending solely either on CO₂ or sugars.

Characterization of highly active 2-keto-3-deoxy-L-arabinonate and 2-keto-3-deoxy-D-xylonate dehydratases in terms of the biotransformation of hemicellulose sugars to chemicals

2-keto-3-L-arabinonate dehydratase (L-KdpD) and 2-keto-3-D-xylonate dehydratase (D-KdpD) are the third enzymes in the Weimberg pathway catalyzing the dehydration of respective 2-keto-3-deoxy sugar acids (KDP) to α-ketoglutaric semialdehyde (KGSA). The Weimberg pathway has been explored recently with respect to the synthesis of chemicals from L-arabinose and D-xylose. However, only limited work has been done toward characterizing these two enzymes. In this work, several new L-KdpDs and D-KdpDs were cloned and heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli. Following kinetic characterizations and kinetic stability studies, the L-KdpD from Cupriavidus necator (CnL-KdpD) and D-KdpD from Pseudomonas putida (PpD-KdpD) appeared to be the most promising variants from each enzyme class. Magnesium had no effect on CnL-KdpD, whereas increased activity and stability were observed for PpD-KdpD in the presence of Mg2+. Furthermore, CnL-KdpD was not inhibited in the presence of L-arabinose and L-arabinonate, whereas PpD-KdpD was inhibited with D-xylonate (I50 of 75 mM), but not with D-xylose. Both enzymes were shown to be highly active in the one-step conversions of L-KDP and D-KDP. CnL-KdpD converted > 95% of 500 mM L-KDP to KGSA in the first 2 h while PpD-KdpD converted > 90% of 500 mM D-KDP after 4 h. Both enzymes in combination were able to convert 83% of a racemic mixture of D,L-KDP (500 mM) after 4 h, with both enzymes being specific toward the respective stereoisomer. Key points • L-KdpDs and D-KdpDs are specific toward L- and D-KDP, respectively. • Mg2+affected activity and stabilities of D-KdpDs, but not of L-KdpDs. • CnL-KdpD and PpD-KdpD converted 0.5 M of each KDP isomer reaching 95 and 90% yield. • Both enzymes in combination converted 0.5 M racemic D,L-KDP reaching 83% yield.

Direct coupling analysis improves the identification of beneficial amino acid mutations for the functional thermostabilization of a delicate decarboxylase

The optimization of enzyme properties for specific reaction conditions enables their tailored use in biotechnology. Predictions using established computer-based methods, however, remain challenging, especially regarding physical parameters such as thermostability without concurrent loss of activity. Employing established computational methods such as energy calculations using FoldX can lead to the identification of beneficial single amino acid substitutions for the thermostabilization of enzymes. However, these methods require a three-dimensional (3D)-structure of the enzyme. In contrast, coevolutionary analysis is a computational method, which is solely based on sequence data. To enable a comparison, we employed coevolutionary analysis together with structure-based approaches to identify mutations, which stabilize an enzyme while retaining its activity. As an example, we used the delicate dimeric, thiamine pyrophosphate dependent enzyme ketoisovalerate decarboxylase (Kivd) and experimentally determined its stability represented by a T50 value indicating the temperature where 50% of enzymatic activity remained after incubation for 10 min. Coevolutionary analysis suggested 12 beneficial mutations, which were not identified by previously established methods, out of which four mutations led to a functional Kivd with an increased T50 value of up to 3.9°C.

Enhancing the thermostability and activity of uronate dehydrogenase from Agrobacterium tumefaciens LBA4404 by semi-rational engineering

Background

Glucaric acid, one of the aldaric acids, has been declared a “top value-added chemical from biomass”, and is especially important in the food and pharmaceutical industries. Biocatalytic production of glucaric acid from glucuronic acid is more environmentally friendly, efficient and economical than chemical synthesis. Uronate dehydrogenases (UDHs) are the key enzymes for the preparation of glucaric acid in this way, but the poor thermostability and low activity of UDH limit its industrial application. Therefore, improving the thermostability and activity of UDH, for example by semi-rational design, is a major research goal.

Results

In the present work, three UDHs were obtained from different Agrobacterium tumefaciens strains. The three UDHs have an approximate molecular weight of 32 kDa and all contain typically conserved UDH motifs. All three UDHs showed optimal activity within a pH range of 6.0–8.5 and at a temperature of 30 °C, but the UDH from A. tumefaciens (At) LBA4404 had a better catalytic efficiency than the other two UDHs (800 vs 600 and 530 s−1 mM−1). To further boost the catalytic performance of the UDH from AtLBA4404, site-directed mutagenesis based on semi-rational design was carried out. An A39P/H99Y/H234K triple mutant showed a 400-fold improvement in half-life at 59 °C, a 5 °C improvement in $$ {\text{T}}_{ 5 0}^{ 1 0} $$ T 50 10 value and a 2.5-fold improvement in specific activity at 30 °C compared to wild-type UDH.

Conclusions

In this study, we successfully obtained a triple mutant (A39P/H99Y/H234K) with simultaneously enhanced activity and thermostability, which provides a novel alternative for the industrial production of glucaric acid from glucuronic acid.

Construction of a synthetic pathway for the production of 1,3-propanediol from glucose

In this work, we describe the construction of a synthetic metabolic pathway enabling direct biosynthesis of 1,3-propanediol (PDO) from glucose via the Krebs cycle intermediate malate. This non-natural pathway extends a previously published synthetic pathway for the synthesis of (L)-2,4-dihydroxybutyrate (L-DHB) from malate by three additional reaction steps catalyzed respectively, by a DHB dehydrogenase, a 2-keto-4-hydroxybutyrate (OHB) dehydrogenase and a PDO oxidoreductase. Screening and structure-guided protein engineering provided a (L)-DHB dehydrogenase from the membrane-associated (L)-lactate dehydrogenase of E. coli and OHB decarboxylase variants derived from the branched-chain keto-acid decarboxylase encoded by kdcA from Lactococcus lactis or pyruvate decarboxylase from Zymomonas mobilis. The simultaneous overexpression of the genes encoding these enzymes together with the endogenous ydhD-encoded aldehyde reductase enabled PDO biosynthesis from (L)-DHB. While the simultaneous expression of the six enzymatic activities in a single engineered E. coli strain resulted in a low production of 0.1 mM PDO from 110 mM glucose, a 40-fold increased PDO titer was obtained by co-cultivation of an E. coli strain expressing the malate-DHB pathway with another strain harboring the DHB-to-PDO pathway.

Redesign and engineering of a dioxygenase targeting biocatalytic synthesis of 5-hydroxyl leucine

The protein engineering and metabolic engineering strategies are performed to solve rate-limiting steps in the biosynthesis of 5-HLeu.

To beat the heat – engineering of the most thermostable pyruvate decarboxylase to date

Pyruvate decarboxylase (PDC) is a key enzyme for the production of ethanol at high temperatures and for cell-free butanol synthesis.