22 research outputs found

    Deciphering the growth behaviour of Mycobacterium africanum.

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    BACKGROUND: Human tuberculosis (TB) in West Africa is not only caused by M. tuberculosis but also by bacteria of the two lineages of M. africanum. For instance, in The Gambia, 40% of TB is due to infections with M. africanum West African 2. This bacterial lineage is associated with HIV infection, reduced ESAT-6 immunogenicity and slower progression to active disease. Although these characteristics suggest an attenuated phenotype of M. africanum, no underlying mechanism has been described. From the first descriptions of M. africanum in the literature in 1969, the time to a positive culture of M. africanum on solid medium was known to be longer than the time to a positive culture of M. tuberculosis. However, the delayed growth of M. africanum, which may correlate with the less virulent phenotype in the human host, has not previously been studied in detail. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We compared the growth rates of M. tuberculosis and M. africanum isolates from The Gambia in two liquid culture systems. M. africanum grows significantly slower than M. tuberculosis, not only when grown directly from sputa, but also in growth experiments under defined laboratory conditions. We also sequenced four M. africanum isolates and compared their whole genomes with the published M. tuberculosis H37Rv genome. M. africanum strains have several non-synonymous SNPs or frameshift mutations in genes that were previously associated with growth-attenuation. M. africanum strains also have a higher mutation frequency in genes crucial for transport of sulphur, ions and lipids/fatty acids across the cell membrane into the bacterial cell. Surprisingly, 5 of 7 operons, recently described as essential for intracellular survival of H37Rv in the host macrophage, showed at least one non-synonymously mutated gene in M. africanum. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The altered growth behaviour of M. africanum might indicate a different survival strategy within host cells

    Ethical Considerations for Movement Mapping to Identify Disease Transmission Hotspots.

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    Traditional public health methods for detecting infectious disease transmission, such as contact tracing and molecular epidemiology, are time-consuming and costly. Information and communication technologies, such as global positioning systems, smartphones, and mobile phones, offer opportunities for novel approaches to identifying transmission hotspots. However, mapping the movements of potentially infected persons comes with ethical challenges. During an interdisciplinary meeting of researchers, ethicists, data security specialists, information and communication technology experts, epidemiologists, microbiologists, and others, we arrived at suggestions to mitigate the ethical concerns of movement mapping. These suggestions include a template Data Protection Impact Assessment that follows European Union General Data Protection Regulations

    Systems biology of yeast: enabling technology for development of cell factories for production of advanced biofuels

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    Transportation fuels will gradually shift from oil based fuels towards alternative fuel resources like biofuels. Current bioethanol and biodiesel can, however, not cover the increasing demand for biofuels and there is therefore a need for advanced biofuels with superior fuel properties. Novel cell factories will provide a production platform for advanced biofuels. However, deep cellular understanding is required for improvement of current biofuel cell factories. Fast screening and analysis (-omics) methods and metabolome-wide mathematical models are promising techniques. An integrated systems approach of these techniques drives diversity and quantity of several new biofuel compounds. This review will cover the recent technological developments that support improvement of the advanced biofuels 1-butanol, biodiesels and jetfuels

    Physiological and transcriptional characterization of Saccharomyces cerevisiae engineered for production of fatty acid ethyl esters

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    Saccharomyces cerevisiae has previously been engineered to become a cell factory for the production of fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEEs), molecules suitable for crude diesel replacement. To find new metabolic engineering targets for the improvement of FAEE cell factories, three different FAEE-producing strains of S. cerevisiae, constructed previously, were compared and characterized by quantification of key fluxes and genome-wide transcription analysis. From both the physiological and the transcriptional data, it was indicated that strain CB2I20, with high expression of a heterologous wax ester synthase gene (ws2) and strain BdJ15, containing disruptions of genes DGA1, LRO1, ARE1, ARE2 and POX1, which prevent the conversion of acyl-CoA to sterol esters, triacylglycerides and the degradation to acetyl-CoA, triggered oxidative stress that consequently influenced cellular growth. In the latter strain, stress was possibly triggered by disabling the buffering capacity of lipid droplets in encapsulating toxic fatty acids such as oleic acid. Additionally, it was indicated that there was an increased demand for NADPH required for the reduction steps in fatty acid biosynthesis. In conclusion, our analysis clearly shows that engineering of fatty acid biosynthesis results in transcriptional reprogramming and has a significant effect on overall cellular metabolism

    Improved production of fatty acid ethyl esters in Saccharomyces cerevisiae through up-regulation of the ethanol degradation pathway and expression of the heterologous phosphoketolase pathway

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    Background: Due to an increasing demand of transportation fuels, a lower availability of cheap crude oil and a lack of sustainability of fossil fuels, a gradual shift from petroleum based fuels towards alternative and renewable fuel resources will be required in the near future. Fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEEs) have properties similar to current crude diesel and could therefore form an important contribution to the development of sustainable transportation fuels in future. It is important to develop novel cell factories for efficient production of FAEEs and their precursors. Results: Here, a Saccharomyces cerevisiae cell factory expressing a heterologous wax ester synthase (ws2) from Marinobacter hydrocarbonoclasticus was used to produce FAEEs from ethanol and acyl-coenzyme A (acyl-CoA). The production of acyl-CoA requires large amounts of NADPH and acetyl-CoA. Therefore, two metabolic engineering strategies for improved provision of NADPH and acetyl-CoA were evaluated. First, the ethanol degradation pathway was employed to re-channel carbon flow towards the synthesis of acetyl-CoA. Therefore, ADH2 and ALD6 encoding, respectively, alcohol dehydrogenase and acetaldehyde dehydrogenase were overexpressed together with the heterologous gene acs(SE)(L641P) encoding acetyl-CoA synthetase. The co-overexpression of ADH2, ALD6 and acs(SE)(L641P) with ws2 resulted in 408 +/- 270 mu g FAEE gCDW-1, a 3-fold improvement. Secondly, for the expression of the PHK pathway two genes, xpkA and ack, both descending from Aspergillus nidulans, were co-expressed together with ws2 to catalyze, respectively, the conversion of xylulose-5-phosphate to acetyl phosphate and glyceraldehyde3-phosphate and acetyl phosphate to acetate. Alternatively, ack was substituted with pta from Bacillus subtilis, encoding phosphotransacetylase for the conversion of acetyl phosphate to acetyl-CoA. Both PHK pathways were additionally expressed in a strain with multiple chromosomally integrated ws2 gene, which resulted in respectively 5100 +/- 509 and 4670 +/- 379 mu g FAEE gCDW(-1), an up to 1.7-fold improvement. Conclusion: Two different strategies for engineering of the central carbon metabolism for efficient provision of acetyl-CoA and NADPH required for fatty acid biosynthesis and hence FAEE production were evaluated and it was found that both the ethanol degradation pathway as well as the phosphoketolase pathway improve the yield of FAEEs

    Metabolic pathway engineering for fatty acid ethyl ester production in Saccharomyces cerevisiae using stable chromosomal integration

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    Fatty acid ethyl esters are fatty acid derived molecules similar to first generation biodiesel (fatty acid methyl esters; FAMEs) which can be produced in a microbial cell factory. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a suitable candidate for microbial large scale and long term cultivations, which is the typical industrial production setting for biofuels. It is crucial to conserve the metabolic design of the cell factory during industrial cultivation conditions that require extensive propagation. Genetic modifications therefore have to be introduced in a stable manner. Here, several metabolic engineering strategies for improved production of fatty acid ethyl esters in S. cerevisiae were combined and the genes were stably expressed from the organisms\u27 chromosomes. A wax ester synthase (ws2) was expressed in different yeast strains with an engineered acetyl-CoA and fatty acid metabolism. Thus, we compared expression of ws2 with and without overexpression of alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH2), acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ALD6) and acetyl-CoA synthetase (acs(SE)(L641P)) and further evaluated additional overexpression of a mutant version of acetyl-CoA decarboxylase (ACC1(S1157A,) (S659A)) and the acyl-CoA binding protein (ACB1). The combined engineering efforts of the implementation of ws2, ADH2, ALD6 and acs(SE)(L641P), ACC1(S1157A, S659A) and ACB1 in a S. cerevisiae strain lacking storage lipid formation (are1 Delta, are2 Delta, dga1 Delta and lro1 Delta) and beta-oxidation (pox1 Delta) resulted in a 4.1-fold improvement compared with sole expression of ws2 in S. cerevisiae
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