scholarly journals Evaluating the effects of synthetic POM cycles and NAD kinase expression on fatty alcohol production in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonnie A McNeil ◽  
Charfeddine Khalifa ◽  
Anagha Krishnan ◽  
David T Stuart

Abstract Background: NADPH-dependent enzymes play important roles in many anabolic reactions and the availability of redox cofactors can influence metabolic flux ultimately influencing titers of bioproducts produced by engineered microbial cells. This may be especially true of oleochemical production when carbon flux through the highly NADPH-dependent fatty acid biosynthesis pathway is increased. While pathway specific approaches are often applied to counter redox imbalance, a study evaluating generalized approaches to improved NADPH availability is lacking in Saccharomyces cerevisiae . Results: Here, we have created four unique synthetic Pyruvate-Oxaloacetate-Malate “POM” cycles consisting of either of the endogenous isoforms of pyruvate carboxylase ( PYC1 or PYC2 ), a modified version of malate dehydrogenase ( ‘MDH1 or ‘MDH2 ), and a truncated cytosolic form of the endogenous malic enzyme ( sMAE1 ). Only the POM cycle that combined expression of PYC1 , ‘MDH2 , and sMAE1 increased the titer of fatty alcohols produced; however, it did so in two unique fatty alcohol producing strains. In a FAS1 overexpression background, expression of this synthetic POM cycle increased fatty alcohol titers by 40% from 49.0 ± 2.2 mg/L to 68.6 ± 3.3 mg/L and showed similar results in a zwf1 deletion strain. The effect of overexpression of the endogenous NAD+ kinases UTR1 , YEF1 , and a cytosolic version of POS5 were also tested. We found that expression of POS5c resulted in an ~35% increase in fatty alcohol titer, while the overexpression of the UTR1 or YEF1 did not significantly influence titers. In these minimally engineered cells, combined overexpression of PYC1 , ‘ MDH2 , sMAE1 and POS5c did not further increase titers Conclusions: Overexpression of PYC1 in conjunction with ‘MDH2 and sMAE1 results in a synthetic POM cycle which can be utilized to improve fatty alcohol production in engineered strains of S. cerevisiae . Additionally, overexpression of a truncated version of POS5 ( POS5c ) results in similar increases in fatty alcohol production. These findings may serve to provide a generalized mechanism to increase NADPH production in engineered cells, resulting in increased bioproduct titers.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan C Greenhalgh ◽  
Sarah A Fahlberg ◽  
Brian F Pfleger ◽  
Philip A Romero

Fatty acyl reductases (FARs) catalyze the reduction of thioesters to alcohols and are key enzymes for the microbial production of fatty alcohols. Many existing metabolic engineering strategies utilize these reductases to produce fatty alcohols from intracellular acyl-CoA pools; however, acting on acyl-ACPs from fatty acid biosynthesis has a lower energetic cost and could enable more efficient production of fatty alcohols. Here we engineer FARs to preferentially act on acyl-ACP substrates and produce fatty alcohols directly from the fatty acid biosynthesis pathway. We implemented a machine learning-driven approach to iteratively search the protein fitness landscape for enzymes that produce high titers of fatty alcohols in vivo. After ten design-test-learn rounds, our approach converged on engineered enzymes that produce over twofold more fatty alcohols than the starting natural sequences. We further characterized the top identified sequence and found its improved alcohol production was a result of an enhanced catalytic rate on acyl-ACP substrates, rather than enzyme expression or KM effects. Finally, we analyzed the sequence-function data generated during the enzyme engineering to identify sequence and structure features that influence fatty alcohol production. We found an enzyme's net charge near the substrate-binding site was strongly correlated with in vivo activity on acyl-ACP substrates. These findings suggest future rational design strategies to engineer highly active enzymes for fatty alcohol production.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (16) ◽  
pp. eabe5544
Author(s):  
Zeenat Rashida ◽  
Rajalakshmi Srinivasan ◽  
Meghana Cyanam ◽  
Sunil Laxman

In changing environments, cells modulate resource budgeting through distinct metabolic routes to control growth. Accordingly, the TORC1 and SNF1/AMPK pathways operate contrastingly in nutrient replete or limited environments to maintain homeostasis. The functions of TORC1 under glucose and amino acid limitation are relatively unknown. We identified a modified form of the yeast TORC1 component Kog1/Raptor, which exhibits delayed growth exclusively during glucose and amino acid limitations. Using this, we found a necessary function for Kog1 in these conditions where TORC1 kinase activity is undetectable. Metabolic flux and transcriptome analysis revealed that Kog1 controls SNF1-dependent carbon flux apportioning between glutamate/amino acid biosynthesis and gluconeogenesis. Kog1 regulates SNF1/AMPK activity and outputs and mediates a rapamycin-independent activation of the SNF1 targets Mig1 and Cat8. This enables effective glucose derepression, gluconeogenesis activation, and carbon allocation through different pathways. Therefore, Kog1 centrally regulates metabolic homeostasis and carbon utilization during nutrient limitation by managing SNF1 activity.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regiane Kawasaki ◽  
Rafael A. Baraúna ◽  
Artur Silva ◽  
Marta S. P. Carepo ◽  
Rui Oliveira ◽  
...  

Exiguobacterium antarcticumB7 is extremophile Gram-positive bacteria able to survive in cold environments. A key factor to understanding cold adaptation processes is related to the modification of fatty acids composing the cell membranes of psychrotrophic bacteria. In our study we show thein silicoreconstruction of the fatty acid biosynthesis pathway ofE. antarcticumB7. To build the stoichiometric model, a semiautomatic procedure was applied, which integrates genome information using KEGG and RAST/SEED. Constraint-based methods, namely, Flux Balance Analysis (FBA) and elementary modes (EM), were applied. FBA was implemented in the sense of hexadecenoic acid production maximization. To evaluate the influence of the gene expression in the fluxome analysis, FBA was also calculated using thelog2⁡FCvalues obtained in the transcriptome analysis at 0°C and 37°C. The fatty acid biosynthesis pathway showed a total of 13 elementary flux modes, four of which showed routes for the production of hexadecenoic acid. The reconstructed pathway demonstrated the capacity ofE. antarcticumB7 tode novoproduce fatty acid molecules. Under the influence of the transcriptome, the fluxome was altered, promoting the production of short-chain fatty acids. The calculated models contribute to better understanding of the bacterial adaptation at cold environments.


2014 ◽  
Vol 99 (4) ◽  
pp. 1795-1804 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiping Liu ◽  
Haiying Yu ◽  
Xu Jiang ◽  
Guomin Ai ◽  
Bo Yu ◽  
...  

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