Designing glucose utilization "highway" for recombinant biosynthesis.

cAMP receptor protein (CRP) is known as a global regulatory factor mainly mediating carbon source catabolism. Herein, we successfully engineered CRP to develop microbial chassis cells with improved recombinant biosynthetic capability in minimal medium with glucose as single carbon source. The obtained best-performing cAMP-independent CRPmu9 mutant conferred both faster cell growth and a 133-fold improvement in expression level of lac promoter in presence of 2% glucose, compared with strain under regulation of CRPwild-type. Promoters free from "glucose repression" are advantageous for recombinant expression, as glucose is a frequently used inexpensive carbon source in high-cell-density fermentations. Transcriptome analysis demonstrated that the CRP mutant globally rewired cell metabolism, displaying elevated tricarboxylic acid cycle activity; reduced acetate formation; increased nucleotide biosynthesis; and improved ATP synthesis, tolerance, and stress-resistance activity. Metabolites analysis confirmed the enhancement of glucose utilization with the upregulation of glycolysis and glyoxylate-tricarboxylic acid cycle. As expected, an elevated biosynthetic capability was demonstrated with vanillin, naringenin and caffeic acid biosynthesis in strains regulated by CRPmu9. This study has expanded the significance of CRP optimization into glucose utilization and recombinant biosynthesis, beyond the conventionally designated carbon source utilization other than glucose. The Escherichiacoli cell regulated by CRPmu9 can be potentially used as a beneficial chassis for recombinant biosynthesis.

Engineering an SspB-mediated degron for novel controllable protein degradation.

Elegant controllable protein degradation tools have great applications in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology designs. SspB-mediated ClpXP proteolysis system is well characterized, and SspB acts as an adaptor tethering ssrA-tagged substrates to the ClpXP protease. This degron was applied in metabolism optimization, but the efficiency was barely satisfactory. Limited high-quality tools are available for controllable protein degradation. By coupling structure-guided modeling and directed evolution, we establish state-of-the-art high-throughput screening strategies for engineering both degradation efficiency and SspB-ssrA binding specificity of this degron. The reliability of our approach is confirmed by functional validation of both SspB and ssrA mutants using fluorescence assays and metabolic engineering of itaconic acid or ferulic acid biosynthesis. Isothermal titration calorimetry analysis and molecular modeling revealed that an appropriate instead of excessively strong interaction between SspB and ssrA benefited degradation efficiency. Mutated SspB-ssrA pairs with 7-22-fold higher binding KD than the wild-type pair led to higher degradation efficiency, revealing the advantage of directed evolution over rational design in degradation efficiency optimization. Furthermore, an artificial SspB-ssrA pair exhibiting low crosstalk of interactions with the wild-type SspB-ssrA pair was also developed. Efforts in this study have demonstrated the plasticity of SspB-ssrA binding pocket for designing high-quality controllable protein degradation tools. The obtained mutated degrons enriched the tool box of metabolic engineering designs.

Human ectopic olfactory receptors and their food originated ligands: a review.

Ectopic olfactory receptors (EORs) are expressed in non-nasal tissues of human body. They belong to the G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) superfamily. EORs may not be capable of differentiating odorants as nasal olfactory receptors (ORs), but still can be triggered by odorants and are involved in different biological processes such as anti-inflammation, energy metabolism, apoptosis etc. Consumption of strong flavored foods like celery, oranges, onions, and spices, is a good aid to attenuate inflammation and boost our immune system. During the digestion of these foods in human digestive system and the metabolization by gut microbiota, the odorants closely interacting with EORs, may play important roles in various bio-functions like serotonin release, appetite regulation etc., and ultimately impact health and diseases. Thus, EORs could be a potential target linking the ligands from food and their bioactivities. There have been related studies in different research fields of medicine and physiology, but still no systematic food oriented review. Our review portrays that EORs could be a potential target for functional food development. In this review, we summarized the EORs found in human tissues, their impacts on health and disease, ligands interacting with EORs exerting specific biological effects, and the mechanisms involved.

Dynamic control of toxic natural product biosynthesis by an artificial regulatory circuit.

To mimic the delicately regulated metabolism in nature for improved efficiency, artificial and customized regulatory components for dynamically controlling metabolic networks in multiple layers are essential in laboratory engineering. For this purpose, a novel regulatory component for controlling vanillin biosynthetic pathway was developed through directed evolution, which was responsive to both the product vanillin and substrate ferulic acid, with different capacities. This regulatory component facilitated pathway expression via dynamic control of the intracellular substrate and product concentrations. As vanillin is an antimicrobial compound, low pathway expression and vanillin formation levels enabled better cell growth at an early stage, and the product feedback-activated pathway expression at later stages significantly improved biosynthesis efficiency. This novel multiple-layer dynamic control was demonstrated effective in managing the trade-off between cell growth and production, leading to improved cell growth and vanillin production compared to the conventional or quorum-sensing promoter-controlled pathway. The multiple-layer dynamic control enabled by designed regulatory components responsive to multiple signals shows potential for wide applications in addition to the dynamic controls based on biosynthetic intermediate sensing and quorum sensing reported to date.

Development of a highly efficient and specific L-theanine synthase.

γ-Glutamylcysteine synthetase (γ-GCS) from Escherichia coli, which catalyzes the formation of L-glutamylcysteine from L-glutamic acid and L-cysteine, was engineered into an L-theanine synthase using L-glutamic acid and ethylamine as substrates. A high-throughput screening method using a 96-well plate was developed to evaluate the L-theanine synthesis reaction. Both site-saturation mutagenesis and random mutagenesis were applied. After three rounds of directed evolution, 13B6, the best-performing mutant enzyme, exhibited 14.6- and 17.0-fold improvements in L-theanine production and catalytic efficiency for ethylamine, respectively, compared with the wild-type enzyme. In addition, the specific activity of 13B6 for the original substrate, L-cysteine, decreased to approximately 14.6% of that of the wild-type enzyme. Thus, the γ-GCS enzyme was successfully switched to a specific L-theanine synthase by directed evolution. Furthermore, an ATP-regeneration system was introduced based on polyphosphate kinases catalyzing the transfer of phosphates from polyphosphate to ADP, thus lowering the level of ATP consumption and the cost of L-theanine synthesis. The final L-theanine production by mutant 13B6 reached 30.4 ± 0.3 g/L in 2 h, with a conversion rate of 87.1%, which has great potential for industrial applications.

Sensing Sub-10 nm Wide Perturbations in Background Nanopatterns Using Optical Pseudoelectrodynamics Microscopy (OPEM).

Using light as a probe to investigate perturbations with deep subwavelength dimensions in large-scale wafers is challenging because of the diffraction limit and the weak Rayleigh scattering. In this Letter, we report on a nondestructive noninterference far-field imaging method, which is built upon electrodynamic principles (mechanical work and force) of the light-matter interaction, rather than the intrinsic properties of light. We demonstrate sensing of nanoscale perturbations with sub-10 nm features in semiconductor nanopatterns. This framework is implemented using a visible-light bright-field microscope with a broadband source and a through-focus scanning apparatus. This work creates a new paradigm for exploring light-matter interactions at the nanoscale using microscopy that can potentially be extended to many other problems, for example, bioimaging, material analysis, and nanometrology.

[New thoughts on material basis and mechanism of Yin-tonifying traditional Chinese medicine in treatment of diabetes mellitus and its complications].

Diabetes mellitus is a serious chronic metabolic disease, and the patient's hyperglycemia is often accompanied by complications. In the circles of medical science, traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) has the earliest knowledge and research about diabetes. According to TCM, the clinical characteristics of diabetes mellitus were basically the same as "Xiaoke". TCM also believes that "Yin deficiency and dryness heat" was the main pathogenesis of diabetes. Therefore, Yin-tonifying TCMs is widely used in clinical treatment of diabetes mellitus, including Dendrobii Caulis, Lilii Bulbus, Ophiopogonis Radix, Polygonati Rhizome. The effective component for treating diabetes in the above Chinese materia medica is polysaccharides, which is used to treat complications of diabetes mellitus, like vascular disease, nephropathy, retinopathy, peripheral neuropathy. According to literature reports, except for specific some Yin-tonifying TCMs with effective ingredients for preventing and treating diabetes, other Yin-tonifying TCMs only contain water, alcohol extracts or polysaccharides in the treatment of diabetes. However, due to unclear material basis, dose-effect relationship and mechanism target of hypoglycemic drugs, Yin-tonifying TCMs are restricted in clinical application, with certain difficulties in in-depth studies. In this paper, the literatures related to the treatment of diabetes mellitus and its complications with Yin-tonifying TCM are analyzed and summarized, the existing problems are analyzed, and the research ideas and methods based on chromatographic technology and metabonomics are put forward, in order to provide reference for the application and development of Yin-tonifying TCM.

Emission of orbital angular momentum based on spoof localized surface plasmons.

An approach to producing the orbital angular momentum (OAM) based on spoof localized surface plasmons (spoof LSPs) in microwave frequencies is demonstrated both theoretically and experimentally. The fundamental and high-order modes of spoof LSPs occur when a textured metallic surface is excited with a microstrip line. Two orthogonal modes of spoof LSPs with +90° or -90° phase retardation are superimposed, resulting in a OAM-vortex mode. In the proposed design, two separate feeding ports are employed to excite the orthogonal resonant modes simultaneously, and a hybrid coupler is used to provide the required ±90° phase retardation. By loading a circularly arranged dipole array on the spoof LSPs, the confined surface waves of the spoof LSPs can be converted into radiated vortex waves. To verify this idea, an OAM-mode emitter with indices of ±3 is fabricated and measured. Experimental near-field distributions and far-field radiation patterns show excellent agreement with the simulated results.

Engineering the effector specificity of regulatory proteins for the in vitro detection of biomarkers and pesticide residues.

Transcriptional regulatory proteins (TRPs)-based whole-cell biosensors are promising owing to their specificity and sensitivity, but their applications are currently limited. Herein, TRPs were adapted for the extracellular detection of a disease biomarker, uric acid, and a typical pesticide residue, carbaryl. A mutant regulatory protein that specifically recognizes carbaryl as its non-natural effector and activates transcription upon carbaryl binding was developed by engineering the regulatory protein TtgR from Pseudomonas putida. The TtgR mutant responsive to carbaryl and a regulatory protein responsive to uric acid were used for in vitro detection, based on their allosteric binding of operator DNA and inducer molecules. Based on the quantitative polymerase chain reactions (qPCRs) output, the minimum detectable concentration was between 1 nM-1 µM and 1-10 nM for uric acid and carbaryl, respectively. Our results demonstrated that engineering the effector specificity of regulatory proteins is a potential technique for generating molecular recognition elements for not only in vivo but also in vitro applications.

Towards the construction of high-quality mutagenesis libraries.

OBJECTIVES: To improve the quality of mutagenesis libraries in directed evolution strategy. RESULTS: In the process of library transformation, transformants which have been shown to take up more than one plasmid might constitute more than 20% of the constructed library, thereby extensively impairing the quality of the library. We propose a practical transformation method to prevent the occurrence of multiple-plasmid transformants while maintaining high transformation efficiency. A visual library model containing plasmids expressing different fluorescent proteins was used. Multiple-plasmid transformants can be reduced through optimizing plasmid DNA amount used for transformation based on the positive correlation between the occurrence frequency of multiple-plasmid transformants and the logarithmic ratio of plasmid molecules to competent cells. CONCLUSIONS: This method provides a simple solution for a seemingly common but often neglected problem, and should be valuable for improving the quality of mutagenesis libraries to enhance the efficiency of directed evolution strategies.

[Characterization of sediment of water extract of Guizhi decoction and its effect on relevant compound (fractions) in decoction].

In order to study the effect of sediment of water extract of Guizhi decoction on the stability, clarity and peaks area, and characterize the chemical composition of the sediments, HPLC and MS methods were established. Through comparison of the common peak areas and the turbidity value of water extract and filtrate, the sediments could greatly change the common peak areas of the decoction (for more than 5 times of the study standard); at the same time, the turbidity value of the decoction could increase by （38.66±1.57）% in 48 h [particularly by （24.54±1.68）% in 6 h]. The test indicated that the sediments had an effect on the stability and clarity under the test conditions in Guizhi decoction. The study confirmed that the sediments were mainly derived from Cassia twig, Paeonia lactiflora and Glycyrrhiza uralensis. On the basis of the reference information, the accurate molecular weight and fragment ion information provided by LC-MS were analyzed, the molecular formula of sediments components A-F were determined, and the possible structural information of components B, C, D and F were deduced. It was suggested that the multi-index, multi-target and multi-angle analysis could ensure the quality of traditional Chinese medicine and the effect of clinical medication. The study also suggested the effect of the sediments on clinical application and the preparation of traditional Chinese medicine.

Improving key enzyme activity in phenylpropanoid pathway with a designed biosensor.

Overexpressing key enzymes of biosynthetic pathways for overproduction of value-added products usually imposes metabolic burdens on cells, which can be circumvented by improving the key enzyme activities. p-Coumarate: CoA ligase (4CL) is a critical enzyme in the phenylpropanoid pathway that synthesizes various natural products. To screen for 4CL with improved activity, a biosensor of resveratrol whose biosynthetic pathway involves 4CL was designed by engineering the TtgR regulatory protein. The biosensor exhibited good specificity and robustness, allowing rapid and sensitive selection of resveratrol hyper-producers. A 4CL variant with improved activity was selected from a 4CL mutagenesis library constructed in the resveratrol biosynthetic pathway in Escherichia coli. This mutant led to increased production of not only resveratrol but also the flavonoid naringenin, when introduced in their corresponding biosynthetic pathways. These findings demonstrate the feasibility of improving key enzyme activities in important biosynthetic pathways with the aid of designed biosensors of pathway products.

Biosensor-aided high-throughput screening of hyper-producing cells for malonyl-CoA-derived products.

BACKGROUND: Malonyl-coenzyme A (CoA) is an important biosynthetic precursor in vivo. Although Escherichia coli is a useful organism for biosynthetic applications, its malonyl-CoA level is too low. RESULTS: To identify strains with the best potential for enhanced malonyl-CoA production, we developed a whole-cell biosensor for rapidly reporting intracellular malonyl-CoA concentrations. The biosensor was successfully applied as a high-throughput screening tool for identifying targets at a genome-wide scale that could be critical for improving the malonyl-CoA biosynthesis in vivo. The mutant strains selected synthesized significantly higher titers of the type III polyketide triacetic acid lactone (TAL), phloroglucinol, and free fatty acids compared to the wild-type strain, using malonyl-CoA as a precursor. CONCLUSION: These results validated this novel whole-cell biosensor as a rapid and sensitive malonyl-CoA high-throughput screening tool. Further analysis of the mutant strains showed that the iron ion concentration is closely related to the intracellular malonyl-CoA biosynthesis.

[Research progress on chemical constituents, pharmacological mechanism and clinical application of Guizhi decoction].

Guizhi Decoction was one of the most commonly used traditional Chinese Medicine which possesses the effects of "jie-ji-fa-biao, regulating Ying and Wei". It was mainly used to treat mind-cold due to exogenous evils such as fever, headache, sweating, hate the wind, et al. Modern studies indicated that the chemical constituents of Guizhi decoction mainly include phenylpropanoid, monoterpenes, organic acids, flavonoids, triterpenoid saponins and so on. Pharmacological experimental studies had shown that Guizhi decoction could play a big role in dual-directional regulation on sweat gland, body temperature, immune function, gastrointestinal peristalsis, and blood pressure, and could also play the role of anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antiviral, anti-allergic, analgesic, hypoglycemic, and cardiovascular protection. Many diseases such as internal, external, gynecological and pediatric diseases were treated in the clinical by using Guizhi decoction and its analogous formulae involving circulatory, immune, urinary, reproductive, endocrine, digestive, nervous and other systems. This article reviews the latest research progress of Guizhi decoction from three aspects: chemical constituents, pharmacological mechanism and clinical application. It will provide reference for further research and development of Guizhi decoction.

Directed evolution of leucine dehydrogenase for improved efficiency of L-tert-leucine synthesis.

L-tert-Leucine and its derivatives are used as synthetic building blocks for pharmaceutical active ingredients, chiral auxiliaries, and ligands. Leucine dehydrogenase (LeuDH) is frequently used to prepare L-tert-leucine from the α-keto acid precursor trimethylpyruvate (TMP). In this study, a high-throughput screening method for the L-tert-leucine synthesis reaction based on a spectrophotometric approach was developed. Directed evolution strategy was applied to engineer LeuDH from Lysinibacillus sphaericus for improved efficiency of L-tert-leucine synthesis. After two rounds of random mutagenesis, the specific activity of LeuDH on the substrate TMP was enhanced by more than two-fold, compared with that of the wild-type enzyme, while the activity towards its natural substrate, leucine, decreased. The catalytic efficiencies (k cat/K m) of the best mutant enzyme, H6, on substrates TMP and NADH were all enhanced by more than five-fold as compared with that of the wild-type enzyme. The efficiency of L-tert-leucine synthesis by mutant H6 was significantly improved. A productivity of 1170 g/l/day was achieved for the mutant enzyme H6, compared with 666 g/l/day for the wild-type enzyme.

Fast and accurate finite element analysis of large-scale three-dimensional photonic devices with a robust domain decomposition method.

A fast and accurate full-wave technique based on the dual-primal finite element tearing and interconnecting method and the second-order transmission condition is presented for large-scale three-dimensional photonic device simulations. The technique decomposes a general three-dimensional electromagnetic problem into smaller subdomain problems so that parallel computing can be performed on distributed-memory computer clusters to reduce the simulation time significantly. With the electric fields computed everywhere, photonic device parameters such as transmission and reflection coefficients are extracted. Several photonic devices, with simulation volumes up to 1.9×10(4) (λ/n(avg))3 and modeled with over one hundred million unknowns, are simulated to demonstrate the application, efficiency, and capability of this technique. The simulations show good agreement with experimental results and in a special case with a simplified two-dimensional simulation.

Artificial Biosynthetic Pathway for Efficient Synthesis of Vanillin, a Feruloyl-CoA-Derived Natural Product from Eugenol.

Eugenol, the main component of essential oil from the Syzygium aromaticum clove tree, has great potential as an alternative bioresource feedstock for biosynthesis purposes. Although eugenol degradation to ferulic acid was investigated, an efficient method for directly converting eugenol to targeted natural products has not been established. Herein we identified the inherent inhibitions by simply combining the previously reported ferulic acid biosynthetic pathway and vanillin biosynthetic pathway. To overcome this, we developed a novel biosynthetic pathway for converting eugenol into vanillin, by introducing cinnamoyl-CoA reductase (CCR), which catalyzes conversion of coniferyl aldehyde to feruloyl-CoA. This approach bypasses the need for two catalysts, namely coniferyl aldehyde dehydrogenase and feruloyl-CoA synthetase, thereby eliminating inhibition while simplifying the pathway. To further improve efficiency, we enhanced CCR catalytic efficiency via directed evolution and leveraged an artificialvanillin biosensor for high-throughput screening. Switching the cofactor preference of CCR from NADP+ to NAD+ significantly improved pathway efficiency. This newly designed pathway provides an alternative strategy for efficiently biosynthesizing feruloyl-CoA-derived natural products using eugenol.

Designing a highly efficient type III polyketide whole-cell catalyst with minimized byproduct formation.

BACKGROUND: Polyketide synthases (PKSs) are classified into three types based on their enzyme structures. Among them, type III PKSs, catalyzing the iterative condensation of malonyl-coenzyme A (CoA) with a CoA-linked starter molecule, are important synthases of valuable natural products. However, low efficiency and byproducts formation often limit their applications in recombinant overproduction. RESULTS: Herein, a rapid growth selection system is designed based on the accumulation and derepression of toxic acyl-CoA starter molecule intermediate products, which could be potentially applicable to most type III polyketides biosynthesis. This approach is validated by engineering both chalcone synthases (CHS) and host cell genome, to improve naringenin productions in Escherichia coli. From directed evolution of key enzyme CHS, beneficial mutant with ~ threefold improvement in capability of naringenin biosynthesis was selected and characterized. From directed genome evolution, effect of thioesterases on CHS catalysis is first discovered, expanding our understanding of byproduct formation mechanism in type III PKSs. Taken together, a whole-cell catalyst producing 1082 mg L-1 naringenin in flask with E value (evaluating product specificity) improved from 50.1% to 96.7% is obtained. CONCLUSIONS: The growth selection system has greatly contributed to both enhanced activity and discovery of byproduct formation mechanism in CHS. This research provides new insights in the catalytic mechanisms of CHS and sheds light on engineering highly efficient heterologous bio-factories to produce naringenin, and potentially more high-value type III polyketides, with minimized byproducts formation.

Engineering and application of LacI mutants with stringent expressions.

Optimal transcriptional regulatory circuits are expected to exhibit stringent control, maintaining silence in the absence of inducers while exhibiting a broad induction dynamic range upon the addition of effectors. In the Plac /LacI pair, the promoter of the lac operon in Escherichia coli is characterized by its leakiness, attributed to the moderate affinity of LacI for its operator target. In response to this limitation, the LacI regulatory protein underwent engineering to enhance its regulatory properties. The M7 mutant, carrying I79T and N246S mutations, resulted in the lac promoter displaying approximately 95% less leaky expression and a broader induction dynamic range compared to the wild-type LacI. An in-depth analysis of each mutation revealed distinct regulatory profiles. In contrast to the wild-type LacI, the M7 mutant exhibited a tighter binding to the operator sequence, as evidenced by surface plasmon resonance studies. Leveraging the capabilities of the M7 mutant, a high-value sugar biosensor was constructed. This biosensor facilitated the selection of mutant galactosidases with approximately a seven-fold improvement in specific activity for transgalactosylation. Consequently, this advancement enabled enhanced biosynthesis of galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS).

A phenome-based functional analysis of transcription factors in the cereal head blight fungus, Fusarium graminearum.

Fusarium graminearum is an important plant pathogen that causes head blight of major cereal crops. The fungus produces mycotoxins that are harmful to animal and human. In this study, a systematic analysis of 17 phenotypes of the mutants in 657 Fusarium graminearum genes encoding putative transcription factors (TFs) resulted in a database of over 11,000 phenotypes (phenome). This database provides comprehensive insights into how this cereal pathogen of global significance regulates traits important for growth, development, stress response, pathogenesis, and toxin production and how transcriptional regulations of these traits are interconnected. In-depth analysis of TFs involved in sexual development revealed that mutations causing defects in perithecia development frequently affect multiple other phenotypes, and the TFs associated with sexual development tend to be highly conserved in the fungal kingdom. Besides providing many new insights into understanding the function of F. graminearum TFs, this mutant library and phenome will be a valuable resource for characterizing the gene expression network in this fungus and serve as a reference for studying how different fungi have evolved to control various cellular processes at the transcriptional level.