The l-rhamnose-dependent regulator RhaS and its target promoters from Escherichia coli expand the genetic toolkit for regulatable gene expression in the acetic acid bacterium Gluconobacter oxydans.

For regulatable target gene expression in the acetic acid bacterium (AAB) Gluconobacter oxydans only recently the first plasmids became available. These systems solely enable AraC- and TetR-dependent induction. In this study we showed that the l-rhamnose-dependent regulator RhaS from Escherichia coli and its target promoters P rhaBAD , P rhaT , and P rhaSR could also be used in G. oxydans for regulatable target gene expression. Interestingly, in contrast to the responsiveness in E. coli, in G. oxydans RhaS increased the expression from P rhaBAD in the absence of l-rhamnose and repressed P rhaBAD in the presence of l-rhamnose. Inserting an additional RhaS binding site directly downstream from the -10 region generating promoter variant P rhaBAD(+RhaS-BS) almost doubled the apparent RhaS-dependent promoter strength. Plasmid-based P rhaBAD and P rhaBAD(+RhaS-BS) activity could be reduced up to 90% by RhaS and l-rhamnose, while a genomic copy of P rhaBAD(+RhaS-BS) appeared fully repressed. The RhaS-dependent repression was largely tunable by l-rhamnose concentrations between 0% and only 0.3% (w/v). The RhaS-P rhaBAD and the RhaS-P rhaBAD(+RhaS-BS) systems represent the first heterologous repressible expression systems for G. oxydans. In contrast to P rhaBAD , the E. coli promoter P rhaT was almost inactive in the absence of RhaS. In the presence of RhaS, the P rhaT activity in the absence of l-rhamnose was weak, but could be induced up to 10-fold by addition of l-rhamnose, resulting in a moderate expression level. Therefore, the RhaS-P rhaT system could be suitable for tunable low-level expression of difficult enzymes or membrane proteins in G. oxydans. The insertion of an additional RhaS binding site directly downstream from the E. coli P rhaT -10 region increased the non-induced expression strength and reversed the regulation by RhaS and l-rhamnose from inducible to repressible. The P rhaSR promoter appeared to be positively auto-regulated by RhaS and this activation was increased by l-rhamnose. In summary, the interplay of the l-rhamnose-binding RhaS transcriptional regulator from E. coli with its target promoters P rhaBAD , P rhaT , P rhaSR and variants thereof provide new opportunities for regulatable gene expression in G. oxydans and possibly also for simultaneous l-rhamnose-triggered repression and activation of target genes, which is a highly interesting possibility in metabolic engineering approaches requiring redirection of carbon fluxes.

Highly tunable TetR-dependent target gene expression in the acetic acid bacterium Gluconobacter oxydans.

For the acetic acid bacterium (AAB) Gluconobacter oxydans only recently the first tight system for regulatable target gene expression became available based on the heterologous repressor-activator protein AraC from Escherichia coli and the target promoter ParaBAD. In this study, we tested pure repressor-based TetR- and LacI-dependent target gene expression in G. oxydans by applying the same plasmid backbone and construction principles that we have used successfully for the araC-ParaBAD system. When using a pBBR1MCS-5-based plasmid, the non-induced basal expression of the Tn10-based TetR-dependent expression system was extremely low. This allowed calculated induction ratios of up to more than 3500-fold with the fluorescence reporter protein mNeonGreen (mNG). The induction was highly homogeneous and tunable by varying the anhydrotetracycline concentration from 10 to 200 ng/mL. The already strong reporter gene expression could be doubled by inserting the ribosome binding site AGGAGA into the 3' region of the Ptet sequence upstream from mNG. Alternative plasmid constructs used as controls revealed a strong influence of transcription terminators and antibiotics resistance gene of the plasmid backbone on the resulting expression performance. In contrast to the TetR-Ptet-system, pBBR1MCS-5-based LacI-dependent expression from PlacUV5 always exhibited some non-induced basal reporter expression and was therefore tunable only up to 40-fold induction by IPTG. The leakiness of PlacUV5 when not induced was independent of potential read-through from the lacI promoter. Protein-DNA binding simulations for pH 7, 6, 5, and 4 by computational modeling of LacI, TetR, and AraC with DNA suggested a decreased DNA binding of LacI when pH is below 6, the latter possibly causing the leakiness of LacI-dependent systems hitherto tested in AAB. In summary, the expression performance of the pBBR1MCS-5-based TetR-Ptet system makes this system highly suitable for applications in G. oxydans and possibly in other AAB. KEY POINTS: • A pBBR1MCS-5-based TetR-Ptet system was tunable up to more than 3500-fold induction. • A pBBR1MCS-5-based LacI-PlacUV5 system was leaky and tunable only up to 40-fold. • Modeling of protein-DNA binding suggested decreased DNA binding of LacI at pH < 6.

On the way toward regulatable expression systems in acetic acid bacteria: target gene expression and use cases.

Acetic acid bacteria (AAB) are valuable biocatalysts for which there is growing interest in understanding their basics including physiology and biochemistry. This is accompanied by growing demands for metabolic engineering of AAB to take advantage of their properties and to improve their biomanufacturing efficiencies. Controlled expression of target genes is key to fundamental and applied microbiological research. In order to get an overview of expression systems and their applications in AAB, we carried out a comprehensive literature search using the Web of Science Core Collection database. The Acetobacteraceae family currently comprises 49 genera. We found overall 6097 publications related to one or more AAB genera since 1973, when the first successful recombinant DNA experiments in Escherichia coli have been published. The use of plasmids in AAB began in 1985 and till today was reported for only nine out of the 49 AAB genera currently described. We found at least five major expression plasmid lineages and a multitude of further expression plasmids, almost all enabling only constitutive target gene expression. Only recently, two regulatable expression systems became available for AAB, an N-acyl homoserine lactone (AHL)-inducible system for Komagataeibacter rhaeticus and an L-arabinose-inducible system for Gluconobacter oxydans. Thus, after 35 years of constitutive target gene expression in AAB, we now have the first regulatable expression systems for AAB in hand and further regulatable expression systems for AAB can be expected. KEY POINTS: • Literature search revealed developments and usage of expression systems in AAB. • Only recently 2 regulatable plasmid systems became available for only 2 AAB genera. • Further regulatable expression systems for AAB are in sight.

A tunable L-arabinose-inducible expression plasmid for the acetic acid bacterium Gluconobacter oxydans.

The acetic acid bacterium (AAB) Gluconobacter oxydans incompletely oxidizes a wide variety of carbohydrates and is therefore used industrially for oxidative biotransformations. For G. oxydans, no system was available that allows regulatable plasmid-based expression. We found that the L-arabinose-inducible PBAD promoter and the transcriptional regulator AraC from Escherichia coli MC4100 performed very well in G. oxydans. The respective pBBR1-based plasmids showed very low basal expression of the reporters ß-glucuronidase and mNeonGreen, up to 480-fold induction with 1% L-arabinose, and tunability from 0.1 to 1% L-arabinose. In G. oxydans 621H, L-arabinose was oxidized by the membrane-bound glucose dehydrogenase, which is absent in the multi-deletion strain BP.6. Nevertheless, AraC-PBAD performed similar in both strains in the exponential phase, indicating that a gene knockout is not required for application of AraC-PBAD in wild-type G. oxydans strains. However, the oxidation product arabinonic acid strongly contributed to the acidification of the growth medium in 621H cultures during the stationary phase, which resulted in drastically decreased reporter activities in 621H (pH 3.3) but not in BP.6 cultures (pH 4.4). These activities could be strongly increased quickly solely by incubating stationary cells in D-mannitol-free medium adjusted to pH 6, indicating that the reporters were hardly degraded yet rather became inactive. In a pH-controlled bioreactor, these reporter activities remained high in the stationary phase (pH 6). Finally, we created a multiple cloning vector with araC-PBAD based on pBBR1MCS-5. Together, we demonstrated superior functionality and good tunability of an AraC-PBAD system in G. oxydans that could possibly also be used in other AAB. KEY POINTS: • We found the AraC-PBAD system from E. coli MC4100 was well tunable in G. oxydans. • In the absence of AraC or l-arabinose, expression from PBAD was extremely low. • This araC-PBAD system could also be fully functional in other acetic acid bacteria.

Synthesis Gas (Syngas)-Derived Medium-Chain-Length Polyhydroxyalkanoate Synthesis in Engineered Rhodospirillum rubrum.

The purple nonsulfur alphaproteobacterium Rhodospirillum rubrum S1 was genetically engineered to synthesize a heteropolymer of mainly 3-hydroxydecanoic acid and 3-hydroxyoctanoic acid [P(3HD-co-3HO)] from CO- and CO2-containing artificial synthesis gas (syngas). For this, genes from Pseudomonas putida KT2440 coding for a 3-hydroxyacyl acyl carrier protein (ACP) thioesterase (phaG), a medium-chain-length (MCL) fatty acid coenzyme A (CoA) ligase (PP_0763), and an MCL polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) synthase (phaC1) were cloned and expressed under the control of the CO-inducible promoter PcooF from R. rubrum S1 in a PHA-negative mutant of R. rubrum P(3HD-co-3HO) was accumulated to up to 7.1% (wt/wt) of the cell dry weight by a recombinant mutant strain utilizing exclusively the provided gaseous feedstock syngas. In addition to an increased synthesis of these medium-chain-length PHAs (PHAMCL), enhanced gene expression through the PcooF promoter also led to an increased molar fraction of 3HO in the synthesized copolymer compared with the Plac promoter, which regulated expression on the original vector. The recombinant strains were able to partially degrade the polymer, and the deletion of phaZ2, which codes for a PHA depolymerase most likely involved in intracellular PHA degradation, did not reduce mobilization of the accumulated polymer significantly. However, an amino acid exchange in the active site of PhaZ2 led to a slight increase in PHAMCL accumulation. The accumulated polymer was isolated; it exhibited a molecular mass of 124.3 kDa and a melting point of 49.6°C. With the metabolically engineered strains presented in this proof-of-principle study, we demonstrated the synthesis of elastomeric second-generation biopolymers from renewable feedstocks not competing with human nutrition. IMPORTANCE: Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are natural biodegradable polymers (biopolymers) showing properties similar to those of commonly produced petroleum-based nondegradable polymers. The utilization of cheap substrates for the microbial production of PHAs is crucial to lower production costs. Feedstock not competing with human nutrition is highly favorable. Syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen, can be obtained by pyrolysis of organic waste and can be utilized for PHA synthesis by several kinds of bacteria. Up to now, the biosynthesis of PHAs from syngas has been limited to short-chain-length PHAs, which results in a stiff and brittle material. In this study, the syngas-utilizing bacterium Rhodospirillum rubrum was genetically modified to synthesize a polymer which consisted of medium-chain-length constituents, resulting in a rubber-like material. This study reports the establishment of a microbial synthesis of these so-called medium-chain-length PHAs from syngas and therefore potentially extends the applications of syngas-derived PHAs.