A Vibrio-based microbial platform for accelerated lignocellulosic sugar conversion

Abstract

Background Owing to increasing concerns about climate change and the depletion of fossil fuels, the development of efficient microbial processes for biochemical production from lignocellulosic biomass has been a key issue. Because process efficiency is greatly affected by the inherent metabolic activities of host microorganisms, it is essential to utilize a microorganism that can rapidly convert biomass-derived sugars. Here, we report a novel Vibrio-based microbial platform that can rapidly and simultaneously consume three major lignocellulosic sugars (i.e., glucose, xylose, and arabinose) faster than any previously reported microorganisms. Results The xylose isomerase pathway was constructed in Vibrio sp. dhg, which naturally displays high metabolic activities on glucose and arabinose but lacks xylose catabolism. Subsequent adaptive laboratory evolution significantly improved xylose catabolism of initial strain and led to unprecedently high growth and sugar uptake rate (0.67 h−1 and 2.15 g gdry cell weight−1 h−1, respectively). Furthermore, we achieved co-consumption of the three sugars by deletion of PtsG and introduction of GalP. We validated its superior performance and applicability by demonstrating efficient lactate production with high productivity (1.15 g/L/h) and titer (83 g/L). Conclusions In this study, we developed a Vibrio-based microbial platform with rapid and simultaneous utilization of the three major sugars from lignocellulosic biomass by applying an integrated approach of rational and evolutionary engineering. We believe that the developed strain can be broadly utilized to accelerate the production of diverse biochemicals from lignocellulosic biomass.

Circuit-guided population acclimation of a synthetic microbial consortium for improved biochemical production

“…One still may question "Is a consortium approach still needed even if genetic engineering of a non-model host becomes readily available?". Indeed, genetic engineering of Vibrio species has been recently studied 35,54,55 to leverage their rapid growth and high metabolic capacities. Therefore, it is expected that direct conversion of 3-HP from alginate using a single strain will be available soon.…”

“…As a model system, we applied this strategy to a consortium of Vibrio sp. dhg 34 , 35 and an engineered E. coli strain for the direct production of 3-hydroxypropionic acid (3-HP), an important platform chemical 36 , from alginate, a promising non-conventional feedstock material obtainable from marine biomass. We chose ampicillin as a growth-inhibiting compound and developed a population guider to express the ampicillin degradation gene ( bla ) in response to the 3-HP concentration.…”

SynBio 2.0, a new era for synthetic life: Neglected essential functions for resilience

“…In practice, the remedy to this potentially deleterious situation has been to selectively evolve and stabilize the constructions made in the laboratory (Sandberg et al, 2019). The development of new approaches in this area is expected to change the outcome of difficult designs (Woo et al, 2022; Zhang et al, 2022). The process of evolution in the laboratory results in many mutations.…”

Direct Itaconate Production from Brown Macroalgae Using Engineered Vibrio sp. dhg

“…It is particularly useful because conventional industrial hosts, such as Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, cannot naturally catabolize alginate. Consequently, it has emerged as a promising host platform for brown macroalgal biorefineries. − The development and application of genetic engineering tools have enabled the utilization of Vibrio sp. dhg as a microbial platform for the production of diverse important chemicals, such as ethanol, lactate, citramalate, and lycopene. − These promising achievements suggest the possibility of using this strain to produce itaconate from brown macroalgae.…”