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Cordell WT, Avolio G, Takors R, Pfleger BF. Milligrams to kilograms: making microbes work at scale. Trends Biotechnol 2023; 41:1442-1457. [PMID: 37271589 DOI: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2023.05.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/05/2023] [Revised: 05/08/2023] [Accepted: 05/09/2023] [Indexed: 06/06/2023]
Abstract
If biomanufacturing can become a sustainable route for producing chemicals, it will provide a critical step in reducing greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change. However, efforts to industrialize microbial synthesis of chemicals have met with varied success, due, in part, to challenges in translating laboratory successes to industrial scale. With a particular focus on Escherichia coli, this review examines the lessons learned when studying microbial physiology and metabolism under conditions that simulate large-scale bioreactors and methods to minimize cellular waste through reduction of maintenance energy, optimizing the stress response and minimizing culture heterogeneity. With general strategies to overcome these challenges, biomanufacturing process scale-up could be de-risked and the time and cost of bringing promising syntheses to market could be reduced.
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Affiliation(s)
- William T Cordell
- Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA
| | - Gennaro Avolio
- Institute of Biochemical Engineering, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart 70569, Germany
| | - Ralf Takors
- Institute of Biochemical Engineering, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart 70569, Germany
| | - Brian F Pfleger
- Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA; DOE Center Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA; DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
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Rapid in vitro prototyping of O-methyltransferases for pathway applications in Escherichia coli. Cell Chem Biol 2021; 28:876-886.e4. [PMID: 33957079 DOI: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2021.04.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/27/2020] [Revised: 02/20/2021] [Accepted: 04/16/2021] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
Abstract
O-Methyltransferases are ubiquitous enzymes involved in biosynthetic pathways for secondary metabolites such as bacterial antibiotics, human catecholamine neurotransmitters, and plant phenylpropanoids. While thousands of putative O-methyltransferases are found in sequence databases, few examples are functionally characterized. From a pathway engineering perspective, however, it is crucial to know the substrate and product ranges of the respective enzymes to fully exploit their catalytic power. In this study, we developed an in vitro prototyping workflow that allowed us to screen ∼30 enzymes against five substrates in 3 days with high reproducibility. We combined in vitro transcription/translation of the genes of interest with a microliter-scale enzymatic assay in 96-well plates. The substrate conversion was indirectly measured by quantifying the consumption of the S-adenosyl-L-methionine co-factor by time-resolved fluorescence resonance energy transfer rather than time-consuming product analysis by chromatography. This workflow allowed us to rapidly prototype thus far uncharacterized O-methyltransferases for future use as biocatalysts.
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Collins JH, Young EM. Genetic engineering of host organisms for pharmaceutical synthesis. Curr Opin Biotechnol 2018; 53:191-200. [PMID: 29471209 DOI: 10.1016/j.copbio.2018.02.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/08/2017] [Revised: 01/29/2018] [Accepted: 02/05/2018] [Indexed: 12/21/2022]
Abstract
Pharmaceutical production hosts may be derived from almost any organism, from Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cell lines to isolated actinomycetes. Each host can be improved, historically only through adaptive evolution. Recently, the maturation of organism engineering has expanded the available models, methods, and tools for altering host phenotypes. New tools like CRISPR-associated endonucleases promise to enable precise cellular reprogramming and to access previously intractable hosts. In this review, we discuss the most recent advances in engineering several types of pharmaceutical production hosts. These include model organisms, potential platform hosts with advantageous metabolism or physiology, specialized producers capable of unique biosynthesis, and CHO, the most widely used recombinant protein production host. To realize improved engineered hosts, an increasing number of approaches involving DNA sequencing and synthesis, host rewriting technologies, computational methods, and organism engineering strategies must be used. Integrative workflows that enable application of the right combination of methods to the right production host could enable economical production solutions for emerging human health treatments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joseph H Collins
- Department of Chemical Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, MA 01609, United States
| | - Eric M Young
- Department of Chemical Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, MA 01609, United States.
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Doud DFR, Woyke T. Novel approaches in function-driven single-cell genomics. FEMS Microbiol Rev 2017; 41:538-548. [PMID: 28591840 PMCID: PMC5812545 DOI: 10.1093/femsre/fux009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/28/2016] [Accepted: 02/21/2017] [Indexed: 12/27/2022] Open
Abstract
Deeper sequencing and improved bioinformatics in conjunction with single-cell and metagenomic approaches continue to illuminate undercharacterized environmental microbial communities. This has propelled the 'who is there, and what might they be doing' paradigm to the uncultivated and has already radically changed the topology of the tree of life and provided key insights into the microbial contribution to biogeochemistry. While characterization of 'who' based on marker genes can describe a large fraction of the community, answering 'what are they doing' remains the elusive pinnacle for microbiology. Function-driven single-cell genomics provides a solution by using a function-based screen to subsample complex microbial communities in a targeted manner for the isolation and genome sequencing of single cells. This enables single-cell sequencing to be focused on cells with specific phenotypic or metabolic characteristics of interest. Recovered genomes are conclusively implicated for both encoding and exhibiting the feature of interest, improving downstream annotation and revealing activity levels within that environment. This emerging approach has already improved our understanding of microbial community functioning and facilitated the experimental analysis of uncharacterized gene product space. Here we provide a comprehensive review of strategies that have been applied for function-driven single-cell genomics and the future directions we envision.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Tanja Woyke
- DOE Joint Genome Institute, Walnut Creek, CA 94598, USA
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Weiland-Bräuer N, Langfeldt D, Schmitz RA. Construction and Screening of Marine Metagenomic Large Insert Libraries. Methods Mol Biol 2017; 1539:23-42. [PMID: 27900682 DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4939-6691-2_3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/23/2022]
Abstract
The marine environment covers more than 70 % of the world's surface. Marine microbial communities are highly diverse and have evolved during extended evolutionary processes of physiological adaptations under the influence of a variety of ecological conditions and selection pressures. They harbor an enormous diversity of microbes with still unknown and probably new physiological characteristics. In the past, marine microbes, mostly bacteria of microbial consortia attached to marine tissues of multicellular organisms, have proven to be a rich source of highly potent bioactive compounds, which represent a considerable number of drug candidates. However, to date, the biodiversity of marine microbes and the versatility of their bioactive compounds and metabolites have not been fully explored. This chapter describes sampling in the marine environment, construction of metagenomic large insert libraries from marine habitats, and exemplarily one function based screen of metagenomic clones for identification of quorum quenching activities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nancy Weiland-Bräuer
- Institut für Allgemeine Mikrobiologie, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Am Botanischen Garten 1-9, 24118, Kiel, Germany
| | - Daniela Langfeldt
- Institut für Allgemeine Mikrobiologie, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Am Botanischen Garten 1-9, 24118, Kiel, Germany
| | - Ruth A Schmitz
- Institut für Allgemeine Mikrobiologie, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Am Botanischen Garten 1-9, 24118, Kiel, Germany.
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Contemporary molecular tools in microbial ecology and their application to advancing biotechnology. Biotechnol Adv 2015; 33:1755-73. [DOI: 10.1016/j.biotechadv.2015.09.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/30/2015] [Revised: 09/19/2015] [Accepted: 09/20/2015] [Indexed: 12/30/2022]
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Liu Y, Fredrickson JK, Sadler NC, Nandhikonda P, Smith RD, Wright AT. Advancing understanding of microbial bioenergy conversion processes by activity-based protein profiling. BIOTECHNOLOGY FOR BIOFUELS 2015; 8:156. [PMID: 26413155 PMCID: PMC4582708 DOI: 10.1186/s13068-015-0343-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/09/2015] [Accepted: 09/16/2015] [Indexed: 06/02/2023]
Abstract
The development of renewable biofuels is a global priority, but success will require novel technologies that greatly improve our understanding of microbial systems biology. An approach with great promise in enabling functional characterization of microbes is activity-based protein profiling (ABPP), which employs chemical probes to directly measure enzyme function in discrete enzyme classes in vivo and/or in vitro, thereby facilitating the rapid discovery of new biocatalysts and enabling much improved biofuel production platforms. We review general design strategies in ABPP, and highlight recent advances that are or could be pivotal to biofuels processes including applications of ABPP to cellulosic bioethanol, biodiesel, and phototrophic production of hydrocarbons. We also examine the key challenges and opportunities of ABPP in renewable biofuels research. The integration of ABPP with molecular and systems biology approaches will shed new insight on the catalytic and regulatory mechanisms of functional enzymes and their synergistic effects in the field of biofuels production.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yun Liu
- />Beijing Key Laboratory of Bioprocess, College of Life Science and Technology, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, 100029 Beijing, China
| | - James K. Fredrickson
- />Biological Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Battelle Blvd, MSIN J4-02, Box 999, Richland, WA 99352 USA
| | - Natalie C. Sadler
- />Biological Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Battelle Blvd, MSIN J4-02, Box 999, Richland, WA 99352 USA
| | - Premchendar Nandhikonda
- />Biological Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Battelle Blvd, MSIN J4-02, Box 999, Richland, WA 99352 USA
| | - Richard D. Smith
- />Biological Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Battelle Blvd, MSIN J4-02, Box 999, Richland, WA 99352 USA
| | - Aaron T. Wright
- />Biological Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Battelle Blvd, MSIN J4-02, Box 999, Richland, WA 99352 USA
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