Creating an in vivo bifunctional gene expression circuit through an aptamer-based regulatory mechanism for dynamic metabolic engineering in Bacillus subtilis.
File(s)Deng_Jieying-MBE-Manuscript-R2-MARKED.docx (5.33 MB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Aptamer-based regulatory biosensors can dynamically regulate the expression of target genes in response to ligands and could be used in dynamic metabolic engineering for pathway optimization. However, the existing aptamer-ligand biosensors can only function with non-complementary DNA elements that cannot replicate in growing cells. Here, we construct an aptamer-based synthetic regulatory circuit that can dynamically upregulate and downregulate the expression of target genes in response to the ligand thrombin at transcriptional and translational levels, respectively, and further used this system to dynamically engineer the synthesis of 2'-fucosyllactose (2'-FL) in Bacillus subtilis. First, we demonstrated the binding of ligand molecule thrombin with the aptamer can induce the unwinding of fully complementary double-stranded DNA. Based on this finding, we constructed a bifunctional gene expression regulatory circuit using ligand thrombin-bound aptamers. The expression of the reporter gene ranged from 0.084- to 48.1-fold. Finally, by using the bifunctional regulatory circuit, we dynamically upregulated the expression of key genes fkp and futC and downregulated the expression of gene purR, resulting in the significant increase of 2'-FL titer from 24.7 to 674 mg/L. Compared with the other pathway-specific dynamic engineering systems, here the constructed aptamer-based regulatory circuit is independent of pathways, and can be generally used to fine-tune gene expression in other microbes.
Date Issued
2019-09
Date Acceptance
2019-07-19
Citation
Metabolic Engineering, 2019, 55, pp.179-190
ISSN
1096-7176
Publisher
Elsevier
Start Page
179
End Page
190
Journal / Book Title
Metabolic Engineering
Volume
55
Copyright Statement
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This manuscript is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31336181
PII: S1096-7176(19)30218-6
Subjects
2′-fucosyllactose
Aptamer
Bacillus subtilis
Dynamic metabolic engineering
Ligand thrombin
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
Belgium
Date Publish Online
2019-07-20