Metabolic Engineering of the MEP Pathway in Bacillus subtilis for Increased Biosynthesis of Menaquinone-7.

Vitamin K is essential for blood coagulation and plays important roles in bone and cardiovascular health. Menaquinone-7 (MK-7) is one form of vitamin K that is especially useful due to its long half-life in the circulation. MK-7 is difficult to make via organic synthesis, and is thus commonly produced by fermentation. This study aimed to genetically modify Bacillus subtilis cultures to increase their MK-7 yield and reduce production costs. We constructed 12 different strains of B. subtilis 168 by overexpressing different combinations of the rate-limiting enzymes Dxs, Dxr, Idi, and MenA. We observed an 11-fold enhancement of production in the best-performing strain, resulting in 50 mg/L MK-7. Metabolite analysis revealed new bottlenecks in the pathway at IspG and IspH, which suggest avenues for further optimization. This work highlights the usefulness of Bacillus subtilis for industrial production of high value compounds.

Heterologous Expression of Mycobacterium Alkene Monooxygenases in Gram-Positive and Gram-Negative Bacterial Hosts.

Alkene monooxygenases (MOs) are soluble di-iron-containing enzymes found in bacteria that grow on alkenes. Here, we report improved heterologous expression systems for the propene MO (PmoABCD) and ethene MO (EtnABCD) from Mycobacterium chubuense strain NBB4. Strong functional expression of PmoABCD and EtnABCD was achieved in Mycobacterium smegmatis mc2155, yielding epoxidation activities (62 and 27 nmol/min/mg protein, respectively) higher than any reported to date for heterologous expression of a di-iron MO system. Both PmoABCD and EtnABCD were specialized for the oxidation of gaseous alkenes (C2 to C4), and their activity was much lower on liquid alkenes (C5 to C8). Despite intensive efforts to express the complete EtnABCD enzyme in Escherichia coli, this was not achieved, although recombinant EtnB and EtnD proteins could be purified individually in soluble form. The biochemical function of EtnD as an oxidoreductase was confirmed (1.36 µmol cytochrome c reduced/min/mg protein). Cloning the EtnABCD gene cluster into Pseudomonas putida KT2440 yielded detectable epoxidation of ethene (0.5 nmol/min/mg protein), and this could be stimulated (up to 1.1 nmol/min/mg protein) by the coexpression of cpn60 chaperonins from either Mycobacterium spp. or E. coli Successful expression of the ethene MO in a Gram-negative host was validated by both whole-cell activity assays and peptide mass spectrometry of induced proteins seen on SDS-PAGE gels.IMPORTANCE Alkene MOs are of interest for their potential roles in industrial biocatalysis, most notably for the stereoselective synthesis of epoxides. Wild-type bacteria that grow on alkenes have high activities for alkene oxidation but are problematic for biocatalysis, since they tend to consume the epoxide products. Using recombinant biocatalysts is the obvious alternative, but a major bottleneck is the low activities of recombinant alkene MOs. Here, we provide new high-activity recombinant biocatalysts for alkene oxidation, and we provide insights into how to further improve these systems.

The influence of the ethane-1,2-diamine ligand on the activity of a monofunctional platinum complex.

The continued use of platinum-based chemotherapeutic drugs in the clinic mandates the need for further investigation of the biological activity of structural analogues of the clinically approved complexes. Of interest are monofunctional platinum(II) complexes, which bear only one labile ligand, for which it is believed that each complex binds to DNA only once. Pyriplatin ([PtCl(NH3)2(py)]+) and enpyriplatin ([PtCl(en)(py)]+) are both monofunctional platinum(II) complexes that bear a pyridine ligand and a labile chlorido ligand, differing in their cis­ammine and ethane-1,2-diamine (en) ligands respectively. Despite their similar structure, the complexes exhibit dramatically different cytotoxicities. In this study, we synthesized and characterized both complexes in terms of their cytotoxicity, lipophilicity, DNA binding and cellular accumulation. There was no significant difference between the lipophilicities of the complexes and both complexes exhibited monofunctional type binding, but it was the temporal accumulation profiles of the two complexes which differed greatly. The complexes were further analyzed with size exclusion chromatography coupled with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (SEC-ICP-MS) to determine the platination state of the proteins. Consistent with the accumulation studies, pyriplatin bound to proteins in far greater amounts than enpyriplatin, and this study also revealed some different protein targets between the bifunctional cisplatin and monofunctional pyriplatin. This study highlights the need for more sophisticated techniques, such as SEC-ICP-MS, to determine not only how much of a platinum complex accumulates in cells, but also the speciation and metabolites of platinum anticancer drugs.