New perspectives into Gluconobacter-catalysed biotransformations.

Different from other aerobic microorganisms that oxidise carbon sources to water and carbon dioxide, Gluconobacter catalyses the incomplete oxidation of various substrates with regio- and stereoselectivity. This ability, as well as its capacity to release the resulting products into the reaction media, place Gluconobacter as a privileged member of a non-model microorganism class that may boost industrial biotechnology. Knowledge of new technologies applied to Gluconobacter has been piling up in recent years. Advancements in its genetic modification, application of immobilisation tools and careful designs of the transformations, have improved productivities and stabilities of Gluconobacter strains or enabled new bioconversions for the production of valuable marketable chemicals. In this work, the latest advancements applied to Gluconobacter-catalysed biotransformations are summarised with a special focus on recent available tools to improve them. From genetic and metabolic engineering to bioreactor design, the most recent works on the topic are analysed in depth to provide a comprehensive resource not only for scientists and technologists working on/with Gluconobacter, but for the general biotechnologist.

The future of cassava in the era of biotechnology in Southern Africa.

Cassava (Manihot esculenta) is a major staple food and the world's fourth source of calories. Biotechnological contributions to enhancing this crop, its advances, and present issues must be assessed regularly. Functional genomics, genomic-assisted breeding, molecular tools, and genome editing technologies, among other biotechnological approaches, have helped improve the potential of economically important crops like cassava by addressing some of its significant constraints, such as nutrient deficiency, toxicity, poor starch quality, disease susceptibility, low yield capacity, and postharvest deterioration. However, the development, improvement, and subsequent acceptance of the improved cultivars have been challenging and have required holistic approaches to solving them. This article provides an update of trends and gaps in cassava biotechnology, reviewing the relevant strategies used to improve cassava crops and highlighting the potential risk and acceptability of improved cultivars in Southern Africa.

Bacteriocins: An Overview of Antimicrobial, Toxicity, and Biosafety Assessment by in vivo Models.

The world is facing a significant increase in infections caused by drug-resistant infectious agents. In response, various strategies have been recently explored to treat them, including the development of bacteriocins. Bacteriocins are a group of antimicrobial peptides produced by bacteria, capable of controlling clinically relevant susceptible and drug-resistant bacteria. Bacteriocins have been studied to be able to modify and improve their physicochemical properties, pharmacological effects, and biosafety. This manuscript focuses on the research being developed on the biosafety of bacteriocins, which is a topic that has not been addressed extensively in previous reviews. This work discusses the studies that have tested the effect of bacteriocins against pathogens and assess their toxicity using in vivo models, including murine and other alternative animal models. Thus, this work concludes the urgency to increase and advance the in vivo models that both assess the efficacy of bacteriocins as antimicrobial agents and evaluate possible toxicity and side effects, which are key factors to determine their success as potential therapeutic agents in the fight against infections caused by multidrug-resistant microorganisms.

Metabolic Engineering and Synthetic Biology: Synergies, Future, and Challenges.

The "-omics" era has brought a new set of tools and methods that have created a significant impact on the development of Metabolic Engineering and Synthetic Biology. These fields, rather than working separately, depend on each other to prosper and achieve their individual goals. Synthetic Biology aims to design libraries of genetic components (promoters, coding sequences, terminators, transcriptional factors and their binding sequences, and more), the assembly of devices, genetic circuits and even organism; in addition to obtaining quantitative information for the creation of models that can predict the behavior of biological systems (Cameron et al., 2014). Metabolic engineering seeks for the optimization of cellular processes, endemic to a specific organism, to produce a compound of interest from a substrate, preferably cheap and simple. It uses different databases, libraries of components and conditions to generate the maximum production rate of a desired chemical compound and avoiding inhibitors and conditions that affect the growth rate and other vital functions in the specific organism to achieve these goals; metabolic fluxes manipulation represents an important alternative (Stephanopoulos, 2012).