Research Progress of a Potential Bioreactor: Duckweed

Recently, plant bioreactors have flourished into an exciting area of synthetic biology because of their product safety, inexpensive production cost, and easy scale-up. Duckweed is the smallest and fastest-growing aquatic plant, and has advantages including simple processing and the ability to grow high biomass in smaller areas. Therefore, duckweed could be used as a new potential bioreactor for biological products such as vaccines, antibodies, pharmaceutical proteins, and industrial enzymes. Duckweed has made a breakthrough in biosynthesis as a chassis plant and is being utilized for the production of plenty of biological products or bio-derivatives with multiple uses and high values. This review summarizes the latest progress on genetic background, genetic transformation system, and bioreactor development of duckweed, and provides insights for further exploration and application of duckweed.

Occurrence of Ammonia-Oxidizing Archaea in Wastewater Treatment Plant Bioreactors

ABSTRACT We report molecular evidence that ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) occur in activated sludge bioreactors used to remove ammonia from wastewater. Using PCR primers targeting archaeal ammonia monooxygenase subunit A (amoA) genes, we retrieved and compared 75 sequences from five wastewater treatment plants operating with low dissolved oxygen levels and long retention times. All of these sequences showed similarity to sequences previously found in soil and sediments, and they were distributed primarily in four major phylogenetic clusters. One of these clusters contained virtually identical amoA sequences obtained from all five activated sludge samples (from Oregon, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey) and accounted for 67% of all the sequences, suggesting that this AOA phylotype may be widespread in nitrifying bioreactors.

STABLE TAXANE PRODUCTION IN TAXUS SHOOT CULTURES.

Taxol, a promising anticancer drug, is limited by inadequate supply. The production of taxol and related compounds (taxanes) by Taxus tissue cultures has been reported, yet sustained production has not been demonstrated. One theory is that cell differentiation and/or tissue organization is required to sequester taxol and avoid autotoxicity. To investigate this, T. cuspidata shoot cultures were established and the taxane content of various culture stages compared to that of field needles. HPLC analysis identified two peaks which comigrated and had UV spectra identical to taxol and 10-deacetyl taxol. The levels of 10-deacetyl taxol were similar in all samples. Cultured shoots contained much less taxol than field needles, and the level of a third peak which migrates closely to taxol was inversely related to that of taxol. Taxol content was restored in the first flush out of culture. Shoot cultures of T. brevifolia, T. x media, and T. canadensis have also been analyzed. In addition to shoot cultures, nodule cultures, a biological unit that may be suitable for production of taxanes in plant bioreactors, have been initiated and characterized.