Higher Yield Production from Sophisticated Synthetic Biology Techniques

“It should one day be possible to dynamically regulate any metabolic pathway, regardless of whether a natural sensor is available or not, to make microbial production of commodity chemicals and fuels competitive on a commercial scale.” _LBL

Researchers at the Joint Bioenergy Institute at DOE Lawrence Berkeley Labs have discovered a sophisticated synthetic biology technique which opens the door to much higher yield microbial production of fuels, chemicals, drugs, polymers, and much more.

LBL JBEI

Significant boosts in the microbial production of clean, green and renewable biodiesel fuel has been achieved with the development of a new technique in synthetic biology by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). This new technique – dubbed a dynamic sensor-regulator system (DSRS) – can detect metabolic changes in microbes during the production of fatty acid-based fuels or chemicals and control the expression of genes affecting that production. The result in one demonstration was a threefold increase in the microbial production of biodiesel from glucose.

...Hampering microbial production of fatty acid-based chemicals has been metabolic imbalances during product synthesis.

“Expression of pathway genes at too low a level creates bottlenecks in biosynthetic pathways, whereas expression at too high a level diverts cellular resources to the production of unnecessary enzymes or intermediate metabolites that might otherwise be devoted to the desired chemical,” Zhang says. “Furthermore, the accumulation of these enzymes and intermediate metabolites can have a toxic effect on the microbes, reducing yield and productivity.”

Using the tools of synthetic biology, there have been several strategies developed to meet this challenge but these previous strategies only provide static control of gene expression levels.

“When a gene expression control system is tuned for a particular condition in the bioreactor and the conditions change, the control system will not be able to respond and product synthesis will suffer as a result,” Zhang says.

The DSRS responds to the metabolic status of the microbe in the bioreactor during synthesis by sensing key intermediate metabolites in an engineered pathway. The DSRS then regulates the genes that control the production and consumption of these intermediates to allow their delivery at levels and rates that optimize the pathway for maximum productivity as conditions change in the bioreactor.

“Nature has evolved sensors that can be used to sense the biosynthetic intermediate, but naturally-occurring regulators will rarely suffice to regulate an engineered pathway because these regulators were evolved to support host survival, rather than making chemicals in large quantity,” Zhang says.

To create their DSRS, Zhang, Keasling and Carothers focused on a strain of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria engineered at JBEI to produce diesel fuel directly from glucose. E. coli is a well-studied microorganism whose natural ability to synthesize fatty acids and exceptional amenability to genetic manipulation make it an ideal target for biofuels research. In this latest work, the JBEI researchers first developed biosensors for a key intermediate metabolite – fatty acyl-CoA – in the diesel biosynthetic pathway. They then developed a set of promoters (segments of DNA) that boost the expression of specific genes in response to cellular acyl-CoA levels. These synthetic promoters only become fully activated when both fatty acids and the inducer reagent known as “IPTG” are present.

“For a tightly regulated metabolic pathway to maximize product yields, it is essential that leaky gene expressions from promoters be eliminated,” Zhang says. “Since our hybrid promoters are repressed until induced by IPTG, and the induction levels can be tuned automatically by the FA/acyl-CoA level, they can be readily used to regulate production of biodiesel and other fatty acid-based chemicals.”

Introducing the DSRS into the biodiesel-producing strain of E.coli improved the stability of this strain and tripled the yield of fuel, reaching 28-percent of the theoretical maximum. With further refinements of the technique, yields should go even higher. The DSRS should also be applicable to the microbial production of other chemical products, both fatty acid-based and beyond.

“Given the large number of natural sensors available, our DSRS strategy can be extended to many other biosynthetic pathways to balance metabolism, increase product titers and yields, and stabilize production hosts,” Zhang says. “It should one day be possible to dynamically regulate any metabolic pathway, regardless of whether a natural sensor is available or not, to make microbial production of commodity chemicals and fuels competitive on a commercial scale.” _LBL

H/T GCC

Similar techniques are used to produce valuable pharmaceuticals using microbes. The earliest commercial uses of the techniques discovered at LBL / JBEI will likely produce high value chemicals rather than commodity fuels. Bioreactors are expensive, as are the buildings in which they are housed, as well as the personnel who must maintain, monitor, and operate them. High value products will pay for such facilities long before commodity fuels can do.

But at some point, the economics of fuels markets will shift far enough so that microbial fuels can compete with petroleum based fuels and synthetic fuels from other hydrocarbons.