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Design and experimental evaluation of a minimal, innocuous watermarking strategy to distinguish near-identical DNA and RNA sequences

ABSTRACT: The construction of powerful cell factories requires intensive and extensive remodelling of microbial genomes. Considering the rapidly increasing number of these synthetic biology endeavours, there is an increasing need for DNA watermarking strategies that enable the discrimination between synthetic and native gene copies. While it is well documented that codon usage can affect translation, and most likely mRNA stability in eukaryotes, remarkably few quantitative studies explore the impact of watermarking on transcription, protein expression and physiology in the popular model and industrial yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The present study, using S. cerevisiae as eukaryotic paradigm, designed, implemented and experimentally validated a systematic strategy to watermark DNA with minimal alteration of yeast physiology. The thirteen genes encoding proteins involved in the major pathway for sugar utilization (i.e glycolysis and alcoholic fermentation) were simultaneously watermarked in a yeast strain using the previously published pathway swapping strategy. Carefully swapping codons of these naturally codon optimized, highly expressed genes, did not alter transcript abundance, protein activity and yeast physiology. The markerQuant bioinformatics method could reliably discriminate native from watermarked genes and transcripts. Furthermore, presence of watermarks enabled selective CRISPR/Cas genome editing, specifically targeting the native gene copy while leaving the synthetic, watermarked variant intact. This study offers a validated strategy to simply watermark genes in S. cerevisiae.

ORGANISM(S): Saccharomyces cerevisiae

PROVIDER: GSE135470 | GEO | 2020/06/29

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Saccharomyces cerevisiae has become a popular host for production of non-native compounds. The metabolic pathways involved generally require a net input of energy. To maximize the ATP yield on sugar in S. cerevisiae, industrial cultivation is typically performed in aerobic, sugar-limited fed-batch reactors which, due to constraints in oxygen transfer and cooling capacities, have to be operated at low specific growth rates. Because intracellular levels of key metabolites and cellular energy status are growth-rate dependent, slow growth can significantly affect biomass-specific productivity. Using an engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain expressing a heterologous pathway for resveratrol production as a model energy-requiring product, the impact of specific growth rate on yeast physiology and productivity was investigated in aerobic, glucose-limited chemostat cultures. Stoichiometric analysis revealed that de novo resveratrol production from glucose requires a net input of 2 moles of ATP per mole of produced resveratrol. The biomass-specific production rate of resveratrol showed a strong positive correlation with the specific growth rate. At low growth rates, a substantial fraction of the carbon source was invested in cellular maintenance-energy requirements (e.g., 27% at 0.03 h-1). This distribution of resources was unaffected by resveratrol production. Formation of the by-products coumaric, phloretic and cinnamic acid had no detectable effect on maintenance energy requirement and yeast physiology in the chemostats. Expression of the heterologous pathway led to marked differences in transcript levels in the resveratrol-producing strain, including increased expression levels of genes involved in pathways for precursor supply (e.g., ARO7 and ARO9 involved in phenylalanine biosynthesis). The observed strong differential expression of many glucose-responsive genes in the resveratrol producer as compared to a congenic reference strain could be explained from higher residual glucose concentrations and higher relative growth rates in cultures of the resveratrol producer. De novo resveratrol production by engineered S. cerevisiae is an energy demanding process. Resveratrol production by an engineered strain exhibited a strong correlation with specific growth rate. Since industrial production in fed-batch reactors typically involves low specific growth rates, this study emphasizes the need for uncoupling growth and product formation via energy-requiring pathways. The goal of the present study is to investigate the impact of specific growth rate on biomass-specific productivity, product yield, by-product formation and host strain physiology of an S. cerevisiae strain that was previously engineered for de novo production of resveratrol from glucose. To this end, (by)product formation, physiology and transcriptome were analysed in steady-state, glucose-limited chemostat cultures grown at different dilution rates.

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Design and experimental evaluation of a minimal, innocuous watermarking strategy to distinguish near-identical DNA and RNA sequences

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