Escherichia coli, the workhorse cell factory for the production of chemicals

Combining lipid-mimicking-enabled transition metal and enzyme-mediated catalysis at the cell surface of E. coli

“…E. coli represents a widely used model organism for Gram-negative prokaryotes and is a highly important workhorse in the field of synthetic biology and biotechnology. 17,18 We therefore envisioned that an innovative approach for membrane surface functionalization of such organisms could be of particularly high value. In comparison to mammalian plasma membranes, E. coli membranes exhibit a vastly different structure.…”

From empirical to data-driven host selection: a broad-host-range expression platform to facilitate chassis screening

“…To investigate the applicability of the TetR-P tet promoter as a broad-host-range tight inducible expression system, we selected four species as test-bed for broad-host-range functionality in this study; E. coli, P. putida, B. subtilis and Parageobacillus thermoglucosidasius . Classically E. coli is a Gram-negative organism that has extensively been used for fundamental studies and as a production workhorse, owing to its long history of use in the field of molecular biology 2,3 . P. putida has gained interest as a microbial host suitable for cell factory engineering.…”

“…Since 1884, prokaryotes have been classified according to their response to Gram staining, resulting from the fundamental differences found in the cell envelope structure of the organism 1 . Throughout time, though further isolation and identification of a vast range of microbial phenotypes occurred, history dictated a predominant use of specific model microbial hosts such as the Gram-negative Escherichia coli 2,3 and Gram-positive Bacillus subtilis [4][5][6] in biotechnology. As a result, together with challenges in the successful isolation of environmental isolates, a large fraction of the microbial metabolic potential lies under-studied and underdeveloped, forming a huge untapped resource to tackle some of society's most pressing issues.…”

Engineered green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as a whole-cell photosynthetic biocatalyst for stepwise photoproduction of H2 and ε-caprolactone

“…ethanol, aromatic compounds, terpenoids, fatty acids, acrylamide, vitamins and L-amino acids. [5][6][7] Oxygenic photosynthetic microorganisms are an emerging alternative 8,9 for heterotrophs with their ability for sustainable cofactor regeneration. These microbes use solar energy to oxidise water into molecular oxygen (O 2 ) and protons and to produce renewable reducing equivalents ferre-doxin (Fd) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) to fuel cell metabolism.…”