Methanol-dependent Escherichia coli strains with a complete ribulose monophosphate cycle.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 33106470.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-19235-5 and PMC identifier 7588473.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Methanol is a biotechnologically promising substitute for food and feed substrates since it can be produced renewably from electricity, water and CO<sub>2</sub>. Although progress has been made towards establishing Escherichia coli as a platform organism for methanol conversion via the energy efficient ribulose monophosphate (RuMP) cycle, engineering strains that rely solely on methanol as a carbon source remains challenging. Here, we apply flux balance analysis to comprehensively identify methanol-dependent strains with high potential for adaptive laboratory evolution. We further investigate two out of 1200 candidate strains, one with a deletion of fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase (fbp) and another with triosephosphate isomerase (tpiA) deleted. In contrast to previous reported methanol-dependent strains, both feature a complete RuMP cycle and incorporate methanol to a high degree, with up to 31 and 99% fractional incorporation into RuMP cycle metabolites. These strains represent ideal starting points for evolution towards a fully methylotrophic lifestyle.
Medical subject headings
- Escherichia coli
- Methanol
- Ribulosephosphates