Effects of atomic species and interatomic distance on the interactions in one-dimensional nanomaterials.

Noncovalent van der Waals (vdW) interactions are significant for the constitution of nanomaterials; however, they are not well understood in one-dimensional materials. Herein, we employ density functional theory (DFT) methods to address this issue and find that the many-body effects of vdW interactions within the one-dimensional wires composed of atoms chosen from the second period (B, C, N, O, F) vary with the interatomic distance of the wires. Furthermore, the atomic species effectively regulate the transition threshold of the many-body effects of vdW interactions. In the case of the adsorption of n-heptane (C7H16) on the wires, the atomic species alters the interactions between the wires and the molecule by modulating the coupling vibration between wires and C7H16 molecules. Correspondingly, replacing a portion of Pb with Tl atoms could contribute to the stability of the organic-inorganic hybrid halide perovskites with one-dimensional structures. Our findings not only contribute to the understanding of vdW interactions in one-dimensional structures with second-period atoms (B, C, N, O, F) but also provide clues for improving the stability of perovskites with one-dimensional structures.

Metabolic Engineering of Escherichia coli for Producing Astaxanthin as the Predominant Carotenoid.

Astaxanthin is a carotenoid of significant commercial value due to its superior antioxidant potential and wide applications in the aquaculture, food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. A higher ratio of astaxanthin to the total carotenoids is required for efficient astaxanthin production. ß-Carotene ketolase and hydroxylase play important roles in astaxanthin production. We first compared the conversion efficiency to astaxanthin in several ß-carotene ketolases from Brevundimonas sp. SD212, Sphingomonas sp. DC18, Paracoccus sp. PC1, P. sp. N81106 and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii with the recombinant Escherichia coli cells that synthesize zeaxanthin due to the presence of the Pantoea ananatis crtEBIYZ. The B. sp. SD212 crtW and P. ananatis crtZ genes are the best combination for astaxanthin production. After balancing the activities of ß-carotene ketolase and hydroxylase, an E. coli ASTA-1 that carries neither a plasmid nor an antibiotic marker was constructed to produce astaxanthin as the predominant carotenoid (96.6%) with a specific content of 7.4 ± 0.3 mg/g DCW without an addition of inducer.

Dynamic control of the mevalonate pathway expression for improved zeaxanthin production in Escherichia coli and comparative proteome analysis.

Engineered heterologous multi-gene metabolic pathways often suffer from flux imbalance and toxic metabolites, as the production host typically lacks the regulatory mechanisms for the heterologous pathway. Here, we first coordinated the expression of all genes of the mevalonate (MEV) pathway from Saccharomyces cerevisiae using the tunable intergenic regions (TIGRs), and then dynamically regulated the TIGR-mediated MEV pathway to prevent the accumulation of toxic metabolites by using IPP/FPP-responsive promoter. After introduction of the dynamically controlled TIGR-mediated MEV pathway into Escherichia coli, the content and concentration of zeaxanthin in shaker flask cultures were 2.0- and 2.1-fold higher, respectively, than those of the strain harboring the statically controlled non-TIGR-mediated MEV pathway. The content and concentration of zeaxanthin in E. coli ZEAX (pZSPgadE-MevTTIGR-MevBTIGRIS-2) reached 722.46mg/L and 23.16mg/g dry cell weight (DCW), respectively, in 5.0L fed-batch fermentation. We also comparatively analyzed the proteomes between E. coli ZEAX and E. coli ZEAX (pZSPgadE-MevTTIGR-MevBTIGRIS-2) to understand the mechanism of zeaxanthin biosynthesis. The results of the comparative proteomes demonstrate that zeaxanthin overproduction may be associated with increased precursor availability, increased NADPH availability, increased ATP availability, oxidative stress response, and increased membrane storage capacity for zeaxanthin due to changes in both cellular shape and membrane composition.

Metabolic engineering for the microbial production of isoprenoids: Carotenoids and isoprenoid-based biofuels.

Isoprenoids are the most abundant and highly diverse group of natural products. Many isoprenoids have been used for pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, flavors, cosmetics, food additives and biofuels. Carotenoids and isoprenoid-based biofuels are two classes of important isoprenoids. These isoprenoids have been produced microbially through metabolic engineering and synthetic biology efforts. Herein, we briefly review the engineered biosynthetic pathways in well-characterized microbial systems for the production of carotenoids and several isoprenoid-based biofuels.

Production of L-ornithine from sucrose and molasses by recombinant Corynebacterium glutamicum.

Sucrose and molasses are attractive raw materials for industrial fermentation. Although Corynebacterium glutamicum shows sucrose-utilizing activity, sucrose or molasses is only a fraction of carbon source used in the fermentation medium in most works. An engineered C. glutamicum strain was constructed for producing L-ornithine with sucrose or molasses as a sole carbon source by transferring Mannheimia succiniciproducens ß-fructofuranosidase gene (sacC). The engineered strain, C. glutamicum ΔAPE6937R42 (pEC-sacC), produced 22.0 g/L of L-ornithine with sucrose as the sole carbon source, which is on par with that obtained by the parent strain C. glutamicum ΔAPE6937R42 with glucose as the sole carbon. The resulting strain C. glutamicum ΔAPE6937R42 (pEC-sacC) produced 27.0 g/L of L-ornithine with molasses as the sole carbon source, which is higher than that obtained by the parent strain C. glutamicum ΔAPE6937R42 with glucose as the sole carbon. This strategy can be applied for developing sucrose- or molasses-utilizing industrial strains.