Background: Microorganisms possess diverse metabolic capabilities that can potentially be leveraged for efficient production of biofuels. Clostridium thermocellum (ATCC 27405) is a thermophilic anaerobe that is both cellulolytic and ethanologenic, meaning that it can directly use the plant sugar, cellulose, and biochemically convert it to ethanol. A major challenge in using microorganisms for chemical production is the need to modify the organism to increase production efficiency. The process of properly engineering an organism is typically arduous. Results: Here we present a genome-scale model of C. thermocellum metabolism, iSR432, for the purpose of establishing a computational tool to study the metabolic network of C. thermocellum and facilitate efforts to engineer C. thermocellum for biofuel production. The model consists of 577 reactions involving 525 intracellular metabolites, 432 genes, and a proteomic-based representation of a cellulosome. The process of constructing this metabolic model led to suggested annotation refinements for 27 genes and identification of areas of metabolism requiring further study. The accuracy of the iSR432 model was tested using experimental growth and by-product secretion data for growth on cellobiose and fructose. Analysis using this model captures the relationship between the reduction-oxidation state of the cell and ethanol secretion and allowed for prediction of gene deletions and environmental conditions that would increase ethanol production.

BackgroundL-tyrosine is a common precursor for a wide range of valuable secondary metabolites, including benzylisoquinoline alkaloids (BIAs) and many polyketides. An industrially tractable yeast strain optimized for production of L-tyrosine could serve as a platform for the development of BIA and polyketide cell factories. This study applied a targeted metabolomics approach to evaluate metabolic engineering strategies to increase the availability of intracellular L-tyrosine in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae CEN.PK. Our engineering strategies combined localized pathway engineering with global engineering of central metabolism, facilitated by genome-scale steady-state modelling.ResultsAddition of a tyrosine feedback resistant version of 3-deoxy-D-arabino-heptulosonate-7-phosphate synthase Aro4 from S. cerevisiae was combined with overexpression of either a tyrosine feedback resistant yeast chorismate mutase Aro7, the native pentafunctional arom protein Aro1, native prephenate dehydrogenase Tyr1 or cyclohexadienyl dehydrogenase TyrC from Zymomonas mobilis. Loss of aromatic carbon was limited by eliminating phenylpyruvate decarboxylase Aro10. The TAL gene from Rhodobacter sphaeroides was used to produce coumarate as a simple test case of a heterologous by-product of tyrosine. Additionally, multiple strategies for engineering global metabolism to promote tyrosine production were evaluated using metabolic modelling. The T21E mutant of pyruvate kinase Cdc19 was hypothesized to slow the conversion of phosphoenolpyruvate to pyruvate and accumulate the former as precursor to the shikimate pathway. The ZWF1 gene coding for glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase was deleted to create an NADPH deficiency designed to force the cell to couple its growth to tyrosine production via overexpressed NADP+-dependent prephenate dehydrogenase Tyr1. Our engineered Zwf1− strain expressing TYRC ARO4FBR and grown in the presence of methionine achieved an intracellular L-tyrosine accumulation up to 520 μmol/g DCW or 192 mM in the cytosol, but sustained flux through this pathway was found to depend on the complete elimination of feedback inhibition and degradation pathways.ConclusionsOur targeted metabolomics approach confirmed a likely regulatory site at DAHP synthase and identified another possible cofactor limitation at prephenate dehydrogenase. Additionally, the genome-scale metabolic model identified design strategies that have the potential to improve availability of erythrose 4-phosphate for DAHP synthase and cofactor availability for prephenate dehydrogenase. We evaluated these strategies and provide recommendations for further improvement of aromatic amino acid biosynthesis in S. cerevisiae.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12934-015-0252-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

We would like to add the information that the RNA sequencing data can be assessed at the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra under accession number SRA022779.

Industrial production of solvents such as EtOH and BuOH from cellulosic biomass has the potential to provide a sustainable energy source that is relatively cheap, abundant, and environmentally sound, but currently production costs are driven up by expensive enzymes, which are necessary to degrade cellulose into fermentable sugars. These costs could be significantly reduced if a microorganism could be engineered to efficiently and quickly convert cellulosic biomass directly to product in a one-step process. There is a large amount of biodiversity in the number of existing microorganisms that naturally possess the enzymes necessary to convert cellulose to usable sugars, and many of these microorganisms can directly ferment sugars to EtOH or other solvents. Currently, the vast majority of cellulolytic organisms are poorly understood and have complex metabolic networks. In this review, we survey the current state of knowledge on different cellulases and metabolic capabilities found in various cellulolytic microorganisms. We also propose that the use of large-scale metabolic models (and associated analyses) is potentially an ideal means for improving our understanding of basic metabolic network function and directing metabolic engineering efforts for cellulolytic microorganisms.

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