Industrial Biotechnology: Drive my car

Dies Natalis 164Applied Science

Physiology of the acidophilic thiobacilli

Applied Science

Crystal ball - 2013: Recombination-based DNA assembly in metabolic engineering: a goodbye to old workhorses?

In this feature, leading researchers in the field of environmental microbiology speculate on the technical and conceptual developments that will drive innovative research and open new vistas over the next few years. For the better part of four decades, genetic engineering has relied on a universal toolbox containing three indispensable implements: restriction enzymes, ligases and, last but not least, Escherichia coli. Even those of us who now languish behind laptops and in meetings rather than work at the bench instantaneously recognize the smells of Luria broth and plasmid preps.BT/BiotechnologyApplied Science

Ureohydrolases as dominant selectable markers in yeast

The invention relates to a nucleic acid molecule encoding a novel selection marker. Said marker is a guanidinobutyrase from Kluyveromyces lactis, which, when expressed in Saccharomyces, allows the growth of the yeast in the presence of guanidinobutyrate as the sole nitrogen source. Said marker can be used in a method for producing a microorganism having an altered genome. The invention further relates to a set of constructs, comprising a first construct comprising a recognition site for an endonuclease, a first region of homology with a target gene of a microorganism, and a first part of a nucleotide sequence encoding the selection marker, and a second construct comprising a second part of the nucleotide sequence encoding the selection marker, a second region of homology with the target gene of the microorganism, and a copy of the endonuclease recognition site. The invention further relates to methods for altering a target gene in a microorganism, to methods for producing a microorganism, and to microorganisms that are produced by the methods of the invention.BT/BiotechnologyApplied Science

Under pressure: evolutionary engineering of yeast strains for improved performance in fuels and chemicals production

Evolutionary engineering, which uses laboratory evolution to select for industrially relevant traits, is a popular strategy in the development of high-performing yeast strains for industrial production of fuels and chemicals. By integrating whole-genome sequencing, bioinformatics, classical genetics and genome-editing techniques, evolutionary engineering has also become a powerful approach for identification and reverse engineering of molecular mechanisms that underlie industrially relevant traits. New techniques enable acceleration of in vivo mutation rates, both across yeast genomes and at specific loci. Recent studies indicate that phenotypic trade-offs, which are often observed after evolution under constant conditions, can be mitigated by using dynamic cultivation regimes. Advances in research on synthetic regulatory circuits offer exciting possibilities to extend the applicability of evolutionary engineering to products of yeasts whose synthesis requires a net input of cellular energy.BT/Industrial Microbiolog