Escherichia coli yjjPB genes encode a succinate transporter important for succinate production.

Under anaerobic conditions, Escherichia coli produces succinate from glucose via the reductive tricarboxylic acid cycle. To date, however, no genes encoding succinate exporters have been established in E. coli. Therefore, we attempted to identify genes encoding succinate exporters by screening an E. coli MG1655 genome library. We identified the yjjPB genes as candidates encoding a succinate transporter, which enhanced succinate production in Pantoea ananatis under aerobic conditions. A complementation assay conducted in Corynebacterium glutamicum strain AJ110655ΔsucE1 demonstrated that both YjjP and YjjB are required for the restoration of succinate production. Furthermore, deletion of yjjPB decreased succinate production in E. coli by 70% under anaerobic conditions. Taken together, these results suggest that YjjPB constitutes a succinate transporter in E. coli and that the products of both genes are required for succinate export.

Identification of enzymes responsible for extracellular alginate depolymerization and alginate metabolism in Vibrio algivorus.

Alginate is a marine non-food-competing polysaccharide that has potential applications in biorefinery. Owing to its large size (molecular weight >300,000 Da), alginate cannot pass through the bacterial cell membrane. Therefore, bacteria that utilize alginate are presumed to have an enzyme that degrades extracellular alginate. Recently, Vibrio algivorus sp. SA2T was identified as a novel alginate-decomposing and alginate-utilizing species. However, little is known about the mechanism of alginate degradation and metabolism in this species. To address this issue, we screened the V. algivorus genomic DNA library for genes encoding polysaccharide-decomposing enzymes using a novel double-layer plate screening method and identified alyB as a candidate. Most identified alginate-decomposing enzymes (i.e., alginate lyases) must be concentrated and purified before extracellular alginate depolymerization. AlyB of V. algivorus heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli depolymerized extracellular alginate without requiring concentration or purification. We found seven homologues in the V. algivorus genome (alyB, alyD, oalA, oalB, oalC, dehR, and toaA) that are thought to encode enzymes responsible for alginate transport and metabolism. Introducing these genes into E. coli enabled the cells to assimilate soluble alginate depolymerized by V. algivorus AlyB as the sole carbon source. The alginate was bioconverted into L-lysine (43.3 mg/l) in E. coli strain AJIK01. These findings demonstrate a simple and novel screening method for identifying polysaccharide-degrading enzymes in bacteria and provide a simple alginate biocatalyst and fermentation system with potential applications in industrial biorefinery.

Vibrio algivorus sp. nov., an alginate- and agarose-assimilating bacterium isolated from the gut flora of a turban shell marine snail.

An agarose- and alginate-assimilating, Gram-reaction-negative, non-motile, rod-shaped bacterium, designated strain SA2T, was isolated from the gut of a turban shell sea snail (Turbo cornutus) collected near Noto Peninsula, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. The 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain SA2T was 99.59 % identical to that of Vibrio rumoiensis DSM 19141T and 98.19 % identical to that of Vibrio litoralis DSM 17657T. This suggested that strain SA2T could be a subspecies of V. rumoiensis or V. litoralis. However, DNA-DNA hybridization results showed only 37.5 % relatedness to DSM 19141T and 44.7 % relatedness to DSM 17657T, which was far lower than the 70 % widely accepted to define common species. Strain SA2T could assimilate agarose as a sole carbon source, whereas strains DSM 19141T and DSM 17657T could not assimilate it at all. Furthermore, results using API 20NE and API ZYM kits indicated that their enzymic and physiological phenotypes were also different. These results suggested that strain SA2T represented a novel species within the genus Vibrio. The major isoprenoid quinone in SA2T was Q-8, and its major polar lipids were phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylglycerol. The major fatty acids were summed feature 3, (comprising C16 : 1ω6c and/or C16 : 1ω7c), C16 : 0, and summed feature 8 (comprising C18 : 1ω6c and/or C18 : 1ω7c). The DNA G+C content of SA2T was 40.7 mol%. The name proposed for this novel species of the genus Vibrio is Vibrio algivorus sp. nov., with the type strain designated SA2T (=DSM 29824T=NBRC 111146T).

Identification of a locus control region for quadruplicated green-sensitive opsin genes in zebrafish.

Duplication of opsin genes has a crucial role in the evolution of visual system. Zebrafish have four green-sensitive (RH2) opsin genes (RH2-1, RH2-2, RH2-3, and RH2-4) arrayed in tandem. They are expressed in the short member of the double cones (SDC) but differ in expression areas in the retina and absorption spectra of their encoding photopigments. The shortest and the second shortest wavelength subtypes, RH2-1 and RH2-2, are expressed in the central-to-dorsal retina. The longer wavelength subtype, RH2-3, is expressed circumscribing the RH2-1/RH2-2 area, and the longest subtype, RH2-4, is expressed further circumscribing the RH2-3 area and mainly occupying the ventral retina. The present report shows that a 0.5-kb region located 15 kb upstream of the RH2 gene array is an essential regulator for their expression. When the 0.5-kb region was deleted from a P1-artificial chromosome (PAC) clone encompassing the four RH2 genes and when one of these genes was replaced with a reporter GFP gene, the GFP expression in SDCs was abolished in the zebrafish to which a series of the modified PAC clones were introduced. Transgenic studies also showed that the 0.5-kb region conferred the SDC-specific expression for promoters of a non-SDC (UV opsin) and a nonretinal (keratin 8) gene. Changing the location of the 0.5-kb region in the PAC clone conferred the highest expression for its proximal gene. The 0.5-kb region was thus designated as RH2-LCR analogous to the locus control region of the L-M opsin genes of primates.

Innovative metabolic pathway design for efficient l-glutamate production by suppressing CO2 emission.

In the pathway of L-glutamic acid (L-Glu) biosynthesis in Corynebacterium glutamicum, 1 mol of L-Glu is synthesized from 1 mol of glucose at a cost of 1 mol of carbon dioxide (CO(2)), with a maximum theoretical yield of 81.7% by weight. We have designed an innovative pathway for efficient L-Glu production employing phosphoketolase (PKT) to bypass the CO(2)-releasing pyruvate dehydrogenase reaction, thereby increasing the maximum theoretical yield of L-Glu from glucose to up to 98.0% by weight (120% mol/mol L-Glu produced/glucose consumed). The xfp gene encoding PKT was cloned from Bifidobacterium animalis and overexpressed under the strong cspB promoter in C. glutamicum. A functional enzyme was detected in an L-Glu-producing strain of C. glutamicum (odhA). When cells of this producer strain with the xfp gene and those without the xfp gene were cultivated in a controlled fermentation system, the L-Glu production yield of the strain expressing the xfp gene was much higher than that of the original strain, coupled with the suppression of CO(2) emission. Consequently, we could successfully enhance L-glutamate production by installing the PKT pathway of B. animalis into C. glutamicuml-Glu metabolism, and this novel metabolic design will be able to increase L-Glu production yield beyond the maximum theoretical yield obtained from the conventional metabolic pathway of biosynthesis from glucose.

Reconstitution of ancestral green visual pigments of zebrafish and molecular mechanism of their spectral differentiation.

We previously reported that zebrafish have four tandemly duplicated green (RH2) opsin genes (RH2-1, RH2-2, RH2-3, and RH2-4). Absorption spectra vary widely among the four photopigments reconstituted with 11-cis retinal, with their peak absorption spectra (lambda(max)) being 467, 476, 488, and 505 nm, respectively. In this study, we inferred the ancestral amino acid (aa) sequences of the zebrafish RH2 opsins by likelihood-based Bayesian statistics and reconstituted the ancestral opsins by site-directed mutagenesis. The ancestral pigment (A1) to the four zebrafish RH2 pigments and that (A3) to RH2-3 and RH2-4 showed lambda(max) at 506 nm, while that (A2) to RH2-1 and RH2-2 showed a lambda(max) at 474 nm, indicating that a spectral shift had occurred toward the shorter wavelength on the evolutionary lineages A1 to A2 by 32 nm, A2 to RH2-1 by 7 nm, and A3 to RH2-3 by 18 nm. Pigment chimeras and site-directed mutagenesis revealed a large contribution (approximately 15 nm) of glutamic acid to glutamine substitution at residue 122 (E122Q) to the A1 to A2 and A3 to RH2-3 spectral shifts. However, the remaining spectral differences appeared to result from complex interactive effects of a number of aa replacements, each of which has only a minor spectral contribution (1-3 nm). The four zebrafish RH2 pigments cover nearly an entire range of lambda(max) distribution among vertebrate RH2 pigments and provide an excellent model to study spectral tuning mechanisms of RH2 in vertebrates.

Spectral differentiation of blue opsins between phylogenetically close but ecologically distant goldfish and zebrafish.

Zebrafish and goldfish are both diurnal freshwater fish species belonging to the same family, Cyprinidae, but their visual ecological surroundings considerably differ. Zebrafish are surface swimmers in conditions of broad and shortwave-dominated background spectra and goldfish are generalized swimmers whose light environment extends to a depth of elevated short wavelength absorbance with turbidity. The peak absorption spectrum (lambdamax) of the zebrafish blue (SWS2) visual pigment is consistently shifted to short wavelength (416 nm) compared with that of the goldfish SWS2 (443 nm). Among the amino acid differences between the two pigments, only one (alanine in zebrafish and serine in goldfish at residue 94) was previously known to cause a difference in absorption spectrum (14-nm lambdamax shift in newt SWS2). In this study, we reconstructed the ancestral SWS2 pigment of the two species by applying likelihood-based Bayesian statistics and performing site-directed mutagenesis. The reconstituted ancestral photopigment had a lambdamax of 430 nm, indicating that zebrafish and goldfish achieved short wavelength (-14 nm) and long wavelength (+13 nm) spectral shifts, respectively, from the ancestor. Unexpectedly, the S94A mutation resulted in only a -3-nm spectral shift when introduced into the goldfish SWS2 pigment. Nearly half of the long wavelength shift toward the goldfish pigment was achieved instead by T116L (6 nm). The S295C mutation toward zebrafish SWS2 contributed to creating a ridge of absorbance around 400 nm and broadening its spectral sensitivity in the short wavelength direction. These results indicate that the evolutionary engineering approach is very effective in deciphering the process of functional divergence of visual pigments.

Gene duplication and spectral diversification of cone visual pigments of zebrafish.

Zebrafish is becoming a powerful animal model for the study of vision but the genomic organization and variation of its visual opsins have not been fully characterized. We show here that zebrafish has two red (LWS-1 and LWS-2), four green (RH2-1, RH2-2, RH2-3, and RH2-4), and single blue (SWS2) and ultraviolet (SWS1) opsin genes in the genome, among which LWS-2, RH2-2, and RH2-3 are novel. SWS2, LWS-1, and LWS-2 are located in tandem and RH2-1, RH2-2, RH2-3, and RH2-4 form another tandem gene cluster. The peak absorption spectra (lambdamax) of the reconstituted photopigments from the opsin cDNAs differed markedly among them: 558 nm (LWS-1), 548 nm (LWS-2), 467 nm (RH2-1), 476 nm (RH2-2), 488 nm (RH2-3), 505 nm (RH2-4), 355 nm (SWS1), 416 nm (SWS2), and 501 nm (RH1, rod opsin). The quantitative RT-PCR revealed a considerable difference among the opsin genes in the expression level in the retina. The expression of the two red opsin genes and of three green opsin genes, RH2-1, RH2-3, and RH2-4, is significantly lower than that of RH2-2, SWS1, and SWS2. These findings must contribute to our comprehensive understanding of visual capabilities of zebrafish and the evolution of the fish visual system and should become a basis of further studies on expression and developmental regulation of the opsin genes.

Visualization of rod photoreceptor development using GFP-transgenic zebrafish.

Zebrafish retina contains five morphologically distinct classes of photoreceptors, each expressing a distinct type of opsin gene. Molecular mechanisms underlying specification of opsin expression and differentiation among the cell types are largely unknown. This is partly because mutants affected with expression of a particular class of opsin gene are difficult to find. In this study we established the transgenic lines of zebrafish carrying green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene under the 1.1-kb and 3.7-kb upstream regions of the rod-opsin gene. In transgenic fish, GFP expression initiated and proceeded in the same spatiotemporal pattern with rod-opsin gene. The retinal section from adult transgenic fish showed GFP expression throughout the rod cell layer. These results indicate that the proximal 1.1-kb region is sufficient to drive gene expression in all rod photoreceptor cells. These transgenic fish should facilitate screening of mutants affected specifically with rod-opsin expression or rod cell development by visualization of rod cells by GFP.