Metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli using synthetic small regulatory RNAs
TL;DR: The ability to fine-tune target genes with designed sRNAs provides substantial advantages over gene-knockout strategies and other large-scale target identification strategies owing to its easy implementation, ability to modulate chromosomal gene expression without modifying those genes and because it does not require construction of strain libraries.
Abstract: Small regulatory RNAs (sRNAs) regulate gene expression in bacteria. We designed synthetic sRNAs to identify and modulate the expression of target genes for metabolic engineering in Escherichia coli. Using synthetic sRNAs for the combinatorial knockdown of four candidate genes in 14 different strains, we isolated an engineered E. coli strain (tyrR- and csrA-repressed S17-1) capable of producing 2 g per liter of tyrosine. Using a library of 130 synthetic sRNAs, we also identified chromosomal gene targets that enabled substantial increases in cadaverine production. Repression of murE led to a 55% increase in cadaverine production compared to the reported engineered strain (XQ56 harboring the plasmid p15CadA). The design principles and the engineering strategy using synthetic sRNAs reported here are generalizable to other bacteria and applicable in developing superior producer strains. The ability to fine-tune target genes with designed sRNAs provides substantial advantages over gene-knockout strategies and other large-scale target identification strategies owing to its easy implementation, ability to modulate chromosomal gene expression without modifying those genes and because it does not require construction of strain libraries.
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TL;DR: A Cas9 nuclease mutant that retains DNA-binding activity and can be engineered as a programmable transcription repressor by preventing the binding of the RNA polymerase to promoter sequences or as a transcription terminator by blocking the running RNAP is described.
Abstract: The ability to artificially control transcription is essential both to the study of gene function and to the construction of synthetic gene networks with desired properties. Cas9 is an RNA-guided doublestranded DNA nuclease that participates in the CRISPR-Cas immune defense against prokaryotic viruses. We describe the use of a Cas9 nuclease mutant that retains DNA-binding activity and can be engineered as a programmable transcription repressor by preventing the binding of the RNA polymerase (RNAP) to promoter sequences or as a transcription terminator by blocking the running RNAP. In addition, a fusion between the omega subunit of the RNAP and a Cas9 nuclease mutant directed to bind upstream promoter regions can achieve programmable transcription activation. The simple and efficient modulation of gene expression achieved by this technology is a useful asset for the study of gene networks and for the development of synthetic biology and biotechnological applications.
1,022 citations
Cites background from "Metabolic engineering of Escherichi..."
...Given the lack of RNAi (39) in prokaryotes, methods that allow for simple and global regulation of gene expression are limited (40)....
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TL;DR: How new technologies can enable metabolic engineering to be scaled up to the industrial level, either by cutting off the lines of control for endogenous metabolism or by infiltrating the system with disruptive, heterologous pathways that overcome cellular regulation is discussed.
891 citations
Cites background from "Metabolic engineering of Escherichi..."
...Although small non-coding RNAs can be used to control protein expression (Na et al., 2013), so far there have been relatively few implementations of this approach....
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TL;DR: This Timeline article charts the technological and cultural lifetime of synthetic biology, with an emphasis on key breakthroughs and future challenges.
Abstract: The ability to rationally engineer microorganisms has been a long-envisioned goal dating back more than a half-century. With the genomics revolution and rise of systems biology in the 1990s came the development of a rigorous engineering discipline to create, control and programme cellular behaviour. The resulting field, known as synthetic biology, has undergone dramatic growth throughout the past decade and is poised to transform biotechnology and medicine. This Timeline article charts the technological and cultural lifetime of synthetic biology, with an emphasis on key breakthroughs and future challenges.
663 citations
TL;DR: The key challenges have been the time-, cost- and labor-intensive processes of strain development owing to the difficulties in understanding complex interactions among the metabolic, gene regulatory and signaling networks at the cell level.
Abstract: Industrial strain development requires system-wide engineering and optimization of cellular metabolism while considering industrially relevant fermentation and recovery processes. It can be conceptualized as several strategies, which may be implemented in an iterative fashion and in different orders. The key challenges have been the time-, cost- and labor-intensive processes of strain development owing to the difficulties in understanding complex interactions among the metabolic, gene regulatory and signaling networks at the cell level, which are collectively represented as overall system performance under industrial fermentation conditions. These challenges can be overcome by taking systems approaches through the use of state-of-the-art tools of systems biology, synthetic biology and evolutionary engineering in the context of industrial bioprocess. Major systems metabolic engineering achievements in recent years include microbial production of amino acids (L-valine, L-threonine, L-lysine and L-arginine), bulk chemicals (1,4-butanediol, 1,4-diaminobutane, 1,5-diaminopentane, 1,3-propanediol, butanol, isobutanol and succinic acid) and drugs (artemisinin).
436 citations
TL;DR: The development of platform Escherichia coli strains that are capable of producing short-chain alkanes (SCAs; petrol), free fatty acids (FFAs), fatty esters and fatty alcohols through the fatty acyl (acyl carrier protein (ACP) to fatty acid to fatty Acyl-CoA pathway is reported.
Abstract: High oil prices and the depletion of fossil resources have fuelled extensive research on the production of sustainable biofuels from renewable resources. Engineered microbes are one option, but until now microbes have not produced gasoline, a mixture of lighter liquid hydrocarbons in the range C4 to C12, in part because cellular metabolism favours the production of mainly long-chain fatty acids and their derivatives. Here Yong Jun Choi and Sang Yup Lee describe Escherichia coli strains engineered to produce short-chain alkanes, free fatty acids, fatty esters and fatty alcohols. The final engineered strain produced as much as 580.8 milligrams per litre of short-chain alkanes, primarily nonane and decane. The metabolic engineering strategies described here should be useful in designing microorganisms for the production of short-chain fatty acids and derivatives as many useful industrial fuels and chemicals.
387 citations
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15 Jan 2001
TL;DR: Molecular Cloning has served as the foundation of technical expertise in labs worldwide for 30 years as mentioned in this paper and has been so popular, or so influential, that no other manual has been more widely used and influential.
Abstract: Molecular Cloning has served as the foundation of technical expertise in labs worldwide for 30 years. No other manual has been so popular, or so influential. Molecular Cloning, Fourth Edition, by the celebrated founding author Joe Sambrook and new co-author, the distinguished HHMI investigator Michael Green, preserves the highly praised detail and clarity of previous editions and includes specific chapters and protocols commissioned for the book from expert practitioners at Yale, U Mass, Rockefeller University, Texas Tech, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Washington University, and other leading institutions. The theoretical and historical underpinnings of techniques are prominent features of the presentation throughout, information that does much to help trouble-shoot experimental problems. For the fourth edition of this classic work, the content has been entirely recast to include nucleic-acid based methods selected as the most widely used and valuable in molecular and cellular biology laboratories. Core chapters from the third edition have been revised to feature current strategies and approaches to the preparation and cloning of nucleic acids, gene transfer, and expression analysis. They are augmented by 12 new chapters which show how DNA, RNA, and proteins should be prepared, evaluated, and manipulated, and how data generation and analysis can be handled. The new content includes methods for studying interactions between cellular components, such as microarrays, next-generation sequencing technologies, RNA interference, and epigenetic analysis using DNA methylation techniques and chromatin immunoprecipitation. To make sense of the wealth of data produced by these techniques, a bioinformatics chapter describes the use of analytical tools for comparing sequences of genes and proteins and identifying common expression patterns among sets of genes. Building on thirty years of trust, reliability, and authority, the fourth edition of Mol
215,169 citations
TL;DR: A simple and highly efficient method to disrupt chromosomal genes in Escherichia coli in which PCR primers provide the homology to the targeted gene(s), which should be widely useful, especially in genome analysis of E. coli and other bacteria.
Abstract: We have developed a simple and highly efficient method to disrupt chromosomal genes in Escherichia coli in which PCR primers provide the homology to the targeted gene(s). In this procedure, recombination requires the phage lambda Red recombinase, which is synthesized under the control of an inducible promoter on an easily curable, low copy number plasmid. To demonstrate the utility of this approach, we generated PCR products by using primers with 36- to 50-nt extensions that are homologous to regions adjacent to the gene to be inactivated and template plasmids carrying antibiotic resistance genes that are flanked by FRT (FLP recognition target) sites. By using the respective PCR products, we made 13 different disruptions of chromosomal genes. Mutants of the arcB, cyaA, lacZYA, ompR-envZ, phnR, pstB, pstCA, pstS, pstSCAB-phoU, recA, and torSTRCAD genes or operons were isolated as antibiotic-resistant colonies after the introduction into bacteria carrying a Red expression plasmid of synthetic (PCR-generated) DNA. The resistance genes were then eliminated by using a helper plasmid encoding the FLP recombinase which is also easily curable. This procedure should be widely useful, especially in genome analysis of E. coli and other bacteria because the procedure can be done in wild-type cells.
14,389 citations
TL;DR: Competition with both transforming and non-transforming plasmids indicates that each cell is capable of taking up many DNA molecules, and that the establishment of a transformation event is neither helped nor hindered significantly by the presence of multiple plasmid molecules.
11,144 citations
Additional excerpts
...BL21(DE3) F- ompT hsdSB (rB-mB-) gal dcm (DE3) Invitrogen C600 F supE44 tonA21 thi-1 thr-1 leuB6 lacY1 λ [18]...
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TL;DR: The 4,639,221-base pair sequence of Escherichia coli K-12 is presented and reveals ubiquitous as well as narrowly distributed gene families; many families of similar genes within E. coli are also evident.
Abstract: The 4,639,221-base pair sequence of Escherichia coli K-12 is presented. Of 4288 protein-coding genes annotated, 38 percent have no attributed function. Comparison with five other sequenced microbes reveals ubiquitous as well as narrowly distributed gene families; many families of similar genes within E. coli are also evident. The largest family of paralogous proteins contains 80 ABC transporters. The genome as a whole is strikingly organized with respect to the local direction of replication; guanines, oligonucleotides possibly related to replication and recombination, and most genes are so oriented. The genome also contains insertion sequence (IS) elements, phage remnants, and many other patches of unusual composition indicating genome plasticity through horizontal transfer.
7,723 citations
TL;DR: The multiplex approach embraces engineering in the context of evolution by expediting the design and evolution of organisms with new and improved properties by facilitating rapid and continuous generation of a diverse set of genetic changes.
Abstract: The breadth of genomic diversity found among organisms in nature allows populations to adapt to diverse environments. However, genomic diversity is difficult to generate in the laboratory and new phenotypes do not easily arise on practical timescales. Although in vitro and directed evolution methods have created genetic variants with usefully altered phenotypes, these methods are limited to laborious and serial manipulation of single genes and are not used for parallel and continuous directed evolution of gene networks or genomes. Here, we describe multiplex automated genome engineering (MAGE) for large-scale programming and evolution of cells. MAGE simultaneously targets many locations on the chromosome for modification in a single cell or across a population of cells, thus producing combinatorial genomic diversity. Because the process is cyclical and scalable, we constructed prototype devices that automate the MAGE technology to facilitate rapid and continuous generation of a diverse set of genetic changes (mismatches, insertions, deletions). We applied MAGE to optimize the 1-deoxy-D-xylulose-5-phosphate (DXP) biosynthesis pathway in Escherichia coli to overproduce the industrially important isoprenoid lycopene. Twenty-four genetic components in the DXP pathway were modified simultaneously using a complex pool of synthetic DNA, creating over 4.3 billion combinatorial genomic variants per day. We isolated variants with more than fivefold increase in lycopene production within 3 days, a significant improvement over existing metabolic engineering techniques. Our multiplex approach embraces engineering in the context of evolution by expediting the design and evolution of organisms with new and improved properties.
1,490 citations