Microbial synthesis of bacitracin:Recent progress,challenges,and prospects

Microorganisms are important sources of various natural products that have been commercialized for human medicine and animal healthcare.Bacitracin is an important antibacterial natural product predominantly pro-duced by Bacillus licheniformis and Bacillus subtilis,and it is characterized by a broad antimicrobial spectrum,strong activity and low resistance,thus bacitracin is extensively applied in animal feed and veterinary medicine industries.In recent years,various strategies have been proposed to improve bacitracin production.Herein,we systematically describe the regulation of bacitracin biosynthesis in genus Bacillus and its associated mechanism,to provide a theoretical basis for bacitracin overproduction.The metabolic engineering strategies applied for bacitracin production are explored,including improving substrate utilization,using an enlarged precursor amino acid pool,increasing ATP supply and NADPH generation,and engineering transcription regulators.We also present several approaches of fermentation process optimization to facilitate the industrial large-scale production of bacitracin.Finally,the challenges and prospects associated with microbial bacitracin synthesis are discussed to facilitate the establishment of high-yield and low-cost biological factories.

Metabolic engineering of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens for efficient production ofα-glucosidase inhibitor1-deoxynojirimycin

Owing to the feature of strongα-glucosidase inhibitory activity,1-deoxynojirimycin(1-DNJ)has broad application prospects in areas of functional food,biomedicine,etc.,and this research wants to construct an efficient strain for 1-DNJ production,basing on Bacillus amyloliquefaciens HZ-12.Firstly,using the temperature-sensitive shuttle plasmid T2(2)-Ori,gene ptsG in phosphotransferase system(PTS)was weakened by homologous recombination,and non-PTS pathway was strengthened by deleting its repressor gene iolR,and 1-DNJ yield of resultant strain HZ-S2 was increased by 4.27-fold,reached 110.72 mg/L.Then,to increase precursor fructose-6-phosphate(F-6-P)supply,phosphofructokinase was weaken,fructose phosphatase GlpX and 6-phosphate glucose isomerase Pgi were strengthened by promoter replacement,moreover,regulator gene nanR was deleted,1-DNJ yield was further increased to 267.37 mg/L by 2.41-fold.Subsequently,promoter of 1-DNJ synthetase cluster was optimized,as well as 5′-UTRs of downstream genes in synthetase cluster,and 1-DNJ produced by the final strain reached 478.62 mg/L.Last but not the least,1-DNJ yield of 1632.50 mg/L was attained in 3 L fermenter,which was the highest yield of 1-DNJ reported to date.Taken together,our results demonstrated that metabolic engineering was an effective strategy for 1-DNJ synthesis,this research laid a foundation for industrialization of functional food and drugs based on 1-DNJ.

Enhancement of precursor amino acid supplies for improving bacitracin production by activation of branched chain amino acid transporter BrnQ and deletion of its regulator gene lrp in Bacillus licheniformis

Bacitracin,a new type of cyclic peptide antibiotic,is widely used as the feed additive in feed industry.Branched chain amino acids(BCAAs)are the key precursors for bacitracin synthesis.In this research,soybean meal was served as the raw material to supply precursor amino acids for bacitracin synthesis,and enhanced production of bacitracin was attempted by engineering BCAA transporter BrnQ and its regulator Lrp in the bacitracin industrial production strain Bacillus licheniformis DW2.Firstly,our results confirmed that Lrp negatively affected bacitracin synthesis in DW2,and deletion of lrp improved intracellular BCAA accumulations,as well as the expression level of BCAA transporter BrnQ,which further led to a 14.71%increase of bacitracin yield,compared with that of DW2.On the contrary,overexpression of Lrp decreased bacitracin yield by 12.28%.Secondly,it was suggested that BrnQ acted as a BCAA importer in DW2,and overexpression of BrnQ enhanced the intracellular BCAA accumulations and 10.43%of bacitracin yield.While,the bacitracin yield decreased by 18.27%in the brnQ deletion strain DW2△brnQ.Finally,BrnQ was further overexpressed in lrp deletion strain DW2△lrp,and bacitracin yield produced by the final strain DW2△lrp::BrnQ was 965.34 U/mL,increased by 22.42%compared with that of DW2(788.48 U/mL).Collectively,this research confirmed that Lrp affected bacitracin synthesis via regulating the expression of BCAA transporter BrnQ and BCAA distributions,and provided a promising strain for industrial production of bacitracin.

Enhanced production of poly-γ-glutamic acid via optimizing the expression cassette of Vitreoscilla hemoglobin in Bacillus licheniformis

Poly-γ-glutamic acid(γ-PGA)is a natural polymer with various applications,and its high-viscosity hinders ox-ygen transmission and improvement of synthesis level.Vitreoscilla hemoglobin(VHB)has been introduced into various hosts as oxygen carrier,however,its expression strength and contact efficiency with oxygen hindered efficient oxygen transfer and metabolite synthesis.Here,we want to optimize the expression cassette of VHB for γ-PGA production.Firstly,our results implied that γ-PGA yields were enhanced when introducing twin-arginine translocation(Tat)signal peptides(SP_(YwbN),SP_(PhoD) and SP_(TorA))into VHB expression cassette,and the best per-formance was attained by SP YwbN from Bacillus subtilis,theγ-PGA yield of which was 18.53% higher than that of control strain,and intracellular ATP content and oxygen transfer coefficient(K_(L)a)were increased by 29.71% and 73.12%,respectively,indicating that VHB mediated by SP YwbN benefited oxygen transfer and ATP generation forγ-PGA synthesis.Furthermore,four promoters were screened,and P vgb was proven as the more suitable promoter for VHB expression andγ-PGA synthesis,andγ-PGA yield of attaining strain WX/pPvgb-YwbN-Vgb was further increased to 40.59 g/L by 10.18%.Finally,WX/pPvgb-YwbN-Vgb was cultivated in 3 L fermentor for fed-batch fermentation,and 46.39 g/Lγ-PGA was attained by glucose feeding,increased by 49.26%compared with the initial yield(31.01 g/L).Taken together,this study has attained an efficient VHB expression cassette for oxygen transfer andγ-PGA synthesis,which could also be applied in the production of other metabolites.

Whole genome engineering by synthesis

Whole genome engineering is now feasible with the aid of genome editing and synthesis tools. Synthesizing a genome from scratch allows modifications of the genomic structure and function to an extent that was hitherto not possible, which will finally lead to new insights into the basic principles of life and enable valuable applications. With several recent genome synthesis projects as examples, the technical details to synthesize a genome and applications of synthetic genome are addressed in this perspective. A series of ongoing or future synthetic genomics projects, including the different genomes to be synthesized in GPwrite, synthetic minimal genome, massively recoded genome, chimeric genome and synthetic genome with expanded genetic alphabet, are also discussed here with a special focus on theoretical and technical impediments in the design and synthesis process. Synthetic genomics will become a commonplace to engineer pathways and genomes according to arbitrary sets of design principles with the development of high-efficient, low-cost genome synthesis and assembly technologies.