A microbial sensor for organophosphate hydrolysis exploiting an engineered specificity switch in a transcription factor.

A whole-cell biosensor utilizing a transcription factor (TF) is an effective tool for sensitive and selective detection of specialty chemicals or anthropogenic molecules, but requires access to an expanded repertoire of TFs. Using homology modeling and ligand docking for binding pocket identification, assisted by conservative mutations in the pocket, we engineered a novel specificity in an Acinetobacter TF, PobR, to 'sense' a chemical p-nitrophenol (pNP) and measured the response via a fluorescent protein reporter expressed from a PobR promoter. Out of 10(7) variants of PobR, four were active when dosed with pNP, with two mutants showing a specificity switch from the native effector 4-hydroxybenzoate (4HB). One of the mutants, pNPmut1 was then used to create a smart microbial cell responding to pNP production from hydrolysis of an insecticide, paraoxon, in a coupled assay involving phosphotriesterase (PTE) enzyme expressed from a separate promoter. We show the fluorescence of the cells correlated with the catalytic efficiency of the PTE variant expressed in each cell. High selectivity between similar molecules (4HB versus pNP), high sensitivity for pNP detection (∼2 µM) and agreement of apo- and holo-structures of PobR scaffold with predetermined computational models are other significant results presented in this work.

Ionic liquids as a class of materials for transdermal delivery and pathogen neutralization.

Biofilm-protected microbial infections in skin are a serious health risk that remains to be adequately addressed. The lack of progress in developing effective treatment strategies is largely due to the transport barriers posed by the stratum corneum of the skin and the biofilm. In this work, we report on the use of Ionic Liquids (ILs) for biofilm disruption and enhanced antibiotic delivery across skin layers. We outline the syntheses of ILs, analysis of relevant physicochemical properties, and subsequent neutralization effects on two biofilm-forming pathogens: Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Salmonella enterica. Further, the ILs were also examined for cytotoxicity, skin irritation, delivery of antibiotics through the skin, and treatment of biofilms in a wound model. Of the materials examined, choline-geranate emerged as a multipurpose IL with excellent antimicrobial activity, minimal toxicity to epithelial cells as well as skin, and effective permeation enhancement for drug delivery. Specifically, choline-geranate was comparable with, or more effective than, bleach treatment against established biofilms of S. enterica and P. aeruginosa, respectively. In addition, choline-geranate increased delivery of cefadroxil, an antibiotic, by >16-fold into the deep tissue layers of the skin without inducing skin irritation. The in vivo efficacy of choline-geranate was validated using a biofilm-infected wound model (>95% bacterial death after 2-h treatment). This work establishes the use of ILs for simultaneous enhancement of topical drug delivery and antibiotic activity.

Engineering an Acinetobacter regulon for biosensing and high-throughput enzyme screening in E. coli via flow cytometry.

We created a single cell sorting system to screen for enzyme activity in Escherichia coli producing 3,4 dihydroxy benzoate (34DHB). To do so, we engineered a transcription factor regulon controlling the expression of green fluorescent protein (GFP) for induction by 34DHB. An autoregulated transcription factor, pcaU, was borrowed from Acinetobacter sp ADP1 to E. coli and its promoter region adapted for activity in E. Coli. The engineered pcaU regulon was inducible at >5 µM exogenous 34DHB, making it a sensitive biosensor for this industrially significant nylon precursor. Addition of a second plasmid provided IPTG inducible expression of dehydroshikimate dehydratase enzyme (AsbF), which converts endogenous dehydroshikimate to 34DHB. This system produced GFP fluorescence in an IPTG dose-dependent manner, and was easily detected in single cell on flow cytometer despite a moderate catalytic efficiency of AsbF. Using fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS), individual cells carrying the active AsbF could be isolated even when diluted into a decoy population of cells carrying a mutant (inactivated) AsbF variant at one part in a million. The same biosensor was also effective for further optimization of itself. FACS on E. coli carrying randomized loci in the promoter showed several variants with enhanced response to 34DHB.

Rosetta comparative modeling for library design: Engineering alternative inducer specificity in a transcription factor.

Structure-based rational mutagenesis for engineering protein functionality has been limited by the scarcity and difficulty of obtaining crystal structures of desired proteins. On the other hand, when high-throughput selection is possible, directed evolution-based approaches for gaining protein functionalities have been random and fortuitous with limited rationalization. We combine comparative modeling of dimer structures, ab initio loop reconstruction, and ligand docking to select positions for mutagenesis to create a library focused on the ligand-contacting residues. The rationally reduced library requirement enabled conservative control of the substitutions by oligonucleotide synthesis and bounding its size within practical transformation efficiencies (∼ 10(7) variants). This rational approach was successfully applied on an inducer-binding domain of an Acinetobacter transcription factor (TF), pobR, which shows high specificity for natural effector molecule, 4-hydroxy benzoate (4HB), but no native response to 3,4-dihydroxy benzoate (34DHB). Selection for mutants with high transcriptional induction by 34DHB was carried out at the single-cell level under flow cytometry (via green fluorescent protein expression under the control of pobR promoter). Critically, this selection protocol allows both selection for induction and rejection of constitutively active mutants. In addition to gain-of-function for 34DHB induction, the selected mutants also showed enhanced sensitivity and response for 4HB (native inducer) while no sensitivity was observed for a non-targeted but chemically similar molecule, 2-hydroxy benzoate (2HB). This is unique application of the Rosetta modeling protocols for library design to engineer a TF. Our approach extends applicability of the Rosetta redesign protocol into regimes without a priori precision structural information.

Precise Genomic Riboregulator Control of Metabolic Flux in Microbial Systems.

Engineered microbes can be used for producing value-added chemicals from renewable feedstocks, relieving the dependency on nonrenewable resources such as petroleum. These microbes often are composed of synthetic metabolic pathways; however, one major problem in establishing a synthetic pathway is the challenge of precisely controlling competing metabolic routes, some of which could be crucial for fitness and survival. While traditional gene deletion and/or coarse overexpression approaches do not provide precise regulation, cis-repressors (CRs) are RNA-based regulatory elements that can control the production levels of a particular protein in a tunable manner. Here, we describe a protocol for a generally applicable fluorescence-activated cell sorting technique used to isolate eight subpopulations of CRs from a semidegenerate library in Escherichia coli, followed by deep sequencing that permitted the identification of 15 individual CRs with a broad range of protein production profiles. Using these new CRs, we demonstrated a change in production levels of a fluorescent reporter by over two orders of magnitude and further showed that these CRs are easily ported from E. coli to Pseudomonas putida. We next used four CRs to tune the production of the enzyme PpsA, involved in pyruvate to phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) conversion, to alter the pool of PEP that feeds into the shikimate pathway. In an engineered P. putida strain, where carbon flux in the shikimate pathway is diverted to the synthesis of the commodity chemical cis,cis-muconate, we found that tuning PpsA translation levels increased the overall titer of muconate. Therefore, CRs provide an approach to precisely tune protein levels in metabolic pathways and will be an important tool for other metabolic engineering efforts.

Sensor-Enabled Alleviation of Product Inhibition in Chorismate Pyruvate-Lyase.

Product inhibition is a frequent bottleneck in industrial enzymes, and testing mutations to alleviate product inhibition via traditional methods remains challenging as many variants need to be tested against multiple substrate and product concentrations. Further, traditional screening methods are conducted in vitro, and resulting enzyme variants may perform differently in vivo in the context of whole-cell metabolism and regulation. In this study, we address these two problems by establishing a high-throughput screening method to alleviate product inhibition in an industrially relevant enzyme, chorismate pyruvate-lyase (UbiC). First, we engineered a highly specific, genetically encoded biosensor for 4-hydroxybenzoate (4HB) in an industrially relevant host, Pseudomonas putida KT2440. We subsequently applied the biosensor to detect the activity of a heterologously expressed UbiC that converts chorismate into 4HB and pyruvate. By using benzoate as a product surrogate that inhibits UbiC without activating the biosensor, we were able to efficiently create and screen a diversified library for UbiC variants with reduced product inhibition. Introduction of the improved UbiC enzyme variant into an experimental production strain for the industrial precursor cis,cis-muconic acid (muconate), enabled a >2-fold yield improvement for glucose to muconate conversion when the new UbiC variant was expressed from a plasmid and a 60% yield increase when the same UbiC variant was genomically integrated into the strain. Overall, this work demonstrates that by coupling a library of enzyme variants to whole-cell catalysis and biosensing, variants with reduced product inhibition can be identified, and that this improved enzyme can result in increased titers of a downstream molecule of interest.

A protocatechuate biosensor for Pseudomonas putida KT2440 via promoter and protein evolution.

Robust fluorescence-based biosensors are emerging as critical tools for high-throughput strain improvement in synthetic biology. Many biosensors are developed in model organisms where sophisticated synthetic biology tools are also well established. However, industrial biochemical production often employs microbes with phenotypes that are advantageous for a target process, and biosensors may fail to directly transition outside the host in which they are developed. In particular, losses in sensitivity and dynamic range of sensing often occur, limiting the application of a biosensor across hosts. Here we demonstrate the optimization of an Escherichia coli-based biosensor in a robust microbial strain for the catabolism of aromatic compounds, Pseudomonas putida KT2440, through a generalizable approach of modulating interactions at the protein-DNA interface in the promoter and the protein-protein dimer interface. The high-throughput biosensor optimization approach demonstrated here is readily applicable towards other allosteric regulators.

Rapid Thermostabilization of Bacillus thuringiensis Serovar Konkukian 97-27 Dehydroshikimate Dehydratase through a Structure-Based Enzyme Design and Whole Cell Activity Assay.

Thermostabilization of an enzyme with complete retention of catalytic efficiency was demonstrated on recombinant 3-dehydroshikimate dehydratase (DHSase or wtAsbF) from Bacillus thuringiensis serovar konkukian 97-27 (hereafter, B. thuringiensis 97-27). The wtAsbF is relatively unstable at 37 °C, in vitro (t1/237 = 15 min), in the absence of divalent metal. We adopted a structure-based design to identify stabilizing mutations and created a combinatorial library based upon predicted mutations at specific locations on the enzyme surface. A diversified asbF library (∼2000 variants) was expressed in E. coli harboring a green fluorescent protein (GFP) reporter system linked to the product of wtAsbF activity (3,4-dihydroxybenzoate, DHB). Mutations detrimental to DHSase function were rapidly eliminated using a high throughput fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS) approach. After a single sorting round and heat screen at 50 °C, a triple AsbF mutant (Mut1), T61N, H135Y, and H257P, was isolated and characterized. The half-life of Mut1 at 37 °C was >10-fold higher than the wtAsbF (t1/237 = 169 min). Further, the second-order rate constants for both wtAsbF and Mut1 were approximately equal (9.9 × 105 M-1 s-1, 7.8 × 105 M-1 s-1, respectively), thus demonstrating protein thermostability did not come at the expense of enzyme thermophilicity. In addition, in vivo overexpression of Mut1 in E. coli resulted in a ∼60-fold increase in functional enzyme when compared to the wild-type enzyme under the identical expression conditions. Finally, overexpression of the thermostable AsbF resulted in an approximate 80-120% increase in DHB accumulation in the media relative to the wild-type enzyme.

Choline and Geranate Deep Eutectic Solvent as a Broad-Spectrum Antiseptic Agent for Preventive and Therapeutic Applications.

Antiseptic agents are the primary arsenal to disinfect skin and prevent pathogens spreading within the host as well as into the surroundings; however the Food and Drug Administration published a report in 2015 requiring additional validation of nearly all current antiseptic agents before their continued use can be allowed. This vulnerable position calls for urgent identification of novel antiseptic agents. Recently, the ability of a deep eutectic, Choline And Geranate (CAGE), to treat biofilms of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Salmonella enterica was demonstrated. Here it is reported that CAGE exhibits broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity against a number of drug-resistant bacteria, fungi, and viruses including clinical isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Staphylococcus aureus, and Candida albicans as well as laboratory strains of Herpes Simplex Virus. Studies in human keratinocytes and mice show that CAGE affords negligible local or systemic toxicity, and an ≈180-14 000-fold improved efficacy/toxicity ratio over currently used antiseptic agents. Further, CAGE penetrates deep into the dermis and treats pathogens located in deep skin layers as confirmed by the ability of CAGE in vivo to treat Propionibacterium acnes infection. In combination, the results clearly demonstrate CAGE holds promise as a transformative platform antiseptic agent for preventive as well as therapeutic applications.