Project description:Clostridium thermocellum is a candidate for cellulosic ethanol production. It expresses enzymes for both cellulose solubilization and its fermentation to produce lignocellulosic ethanol. Understanding how this organism regulates gene expression is of importance for developing a better fundamental understanding of this industrial relevant bacterium. We are primarily interested in gene regulation by three predicted LacI regulators. A previous report of one LacI regulator in C. thermocellum ATCC27405 (Cthe_2808) indicated this was a transcriptional repressor of neighboring genes with repressor activity relieved in the presence of laminaribiose (a Î²-1,3 disaccharide). The current work is aimed at understanding if a homolog of this LacI transcriptional regulator in C. thermocellum DSM1313 and two others putatively characterized as LacI regulators are in fact global regulatory proteins with extensive regulons or, if like the majority of LacI transcription factors, the regulation is limited to local genomic regions. Each of the three LacI regulators was deleted in C. thermocellum DSM1313. Genome re-sequencing was used to confirm the deletion and ensure nonspecific recombination events were avoided during the gene deletion strategy. Growth of each strain on cellobiose was unaffected by any of the gene deletions under pH controlled fermentations. Global gene expression patterns taken at mid-log phase for each strain identified glycoside hydrolase genes encoding hemicellulases, including cellulosomal enzymes, that were highly up-regulated (up to 9 fold) in the absence of each LacI regulator. Thus suggesting these were repressed under wild type conditions. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays have confirmed LacI transcription factor binding to specific regions of gene promoters with putative motifs ranging from 16-18 bp. Work is ongoing to confirm the specific binding motif recognized by the two previously un-characterized transcription factors and assess the occurrence of this motif in the C. thermocellum DSM1313 genome. The identification of LacI repressor activity on hemicellulose gene expression is a key result of this work and will add to the small body of existing literature on the area of gene regulation in C. thermocellum. Four strains of C. thermocellum DSM1313 including a parental strain (Îhpt) and three others with deletion in lacI transcription factors were characterised by RNA-seq. The strains were grown in 1L bioreactors, cells (from 50 ml samples) were harvested at mid exponential, late exponential and 30 min after acid production halted during the transition to stationary phase. The growth studies were performed in triplicate and thirty six samples were analyzed by RNA-sequencing.

Project description:Clostridium thermocellum is a Gram-positive, anaerobic, thermophilic bacterium that ferments cellulose into ethanol. It is a candidate industrial consolidated bioprocess (CBP) biocatalyst for lignocellulosic bioethanol production. However, C. thermocellum is relatively sensitive to ethanol compared to yeast. Previous studies have investigated the membrane and protein composition of wild-type and ethanol tolerant strains, but relatively little is known about the genome changes associated with the ethanol tolerant C. thermocellum strain. In this study, C. thermocellum cultures were grown to mid-exponential phase and then either shocked with the supplementation of ethanol to a final concentration of 3.95 g/L (equal to 0.5% [v/v]) or were untreated. Samples were taken pre-shock and 2, 12, 30, 60, 120, 240 min post-shock for multiple systems biology analyses. The addition of ethanol dramatically reduced the C. thermocellum growth and the final cell density was approximately half of the control fermentations, with concomitant reductions in substrate consumption in the treated cultures. The response of C. thermocellum to ethanol was dynamic and involved more than six hundred genes that were significantly and differentially expressed between the different conditions over time and every functional category was represented. Cellobiose was accumulated within the ethanol-shocked C. thermocellum cells, as well as the sugar phosphates such as fructose-6-P and cellobiose-6-P. The comparison and correlation among intracellular metabolites, proteomic and transcriptomics profiles as well as the ethanol effects on cellulosome, hydrogenase glycolysis and nitrogen metabolism are discussed, which led us to propose that C. thermocellum may utilize the nitrogen metabolism to bypass the arrested carbon metabolism in responding to ethanol stress shock, and the nitrogen metabolic pathway and redox balance may be the key target for improving ethanol tolerance and production in C. thermocellum.

Project description:Ruminiclostridium thermocellum DSM 1313 strain adhE*(EA) expression was studied along with ∆hydG and ∆hydG∆ech mutants strains deposited under GSE54082. All strains have been described in a study entitled Elimination of hydrogenase post-translational modification blocks H2 production and increases ethanol yield in Clostridium thermocellum. Biswas, et .al. Biotechnology for Biofuels 2015 8:20 Ruminiclostridium (Clostridium) thermocellum is a leading candidate organism for implementing a consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) strategy for biofuel production due to its native ability to rapidly consume cellulose and its existing ethanol production pathway. C. thermocellum converts cellulose and cellobiose to lactate, formate, acetate, H2, ethanol, amino acids, and other products. Elimination of the pathways leading to products such as H2 could redirect carbon flux towards ethanol production. Rather than delete each hydrogenase individually, we targeted a hydrogenase maturase gene (hydG), which is involved in converting the three [FeFe] hydrogenase apoenzymes into holoenzymes by assembling the active site. This functionally inactivated all three Fe-Fe hydrogenases simultaneously, as they were unable to make active enzymes. In the ∆hydG mutant, the [NiFe] hydrogenase-encoding ech was also deleted to obtain a mutant that functionally lacks all hydrogenase. The ethanol yield increased nearly 2-fold in ∆hydG∆ech compared to wild type, and H2 production was below the detection limit. Interestingly, ∆hydG and ∆hydG∆ech exhibited improved growth in the presence of acetate in the medium. Transcriptomic and proteomic analysis reveal that genes related to sulfate transport and metabolism were up-regulated in the presence of added acetate in ∆hydG, resulting in altered sulfur metabolism. Further genomic analysis of this strain revealed a mutation in the bi-functional alcohol/aldehyde dehydrogenase adhE gene, resulting in a strain with both NADH- and NADPH-dependent alcohol dehydrogenase activities, whereas the wild type strain can only utilize NADH. This is the exact same adhE mutation found in ethanol-tolerant C. thermocellum strain E50C, but ∆hydG∆ech is not more ethanol tolerant than the wild type. Targeting protein post-translational modification is a promising new approach to target multiple enzymes simultaneously for metabolic engineering. This GEO study pertains to expression profiles generated for C. thermocellum DSM 1313 strain adhE*(EA)

Project description:Clostridium thermocellum is a Gram-positive, anaerobic, thermophilic bacterium that ferments cellulose into ethanol. It is a candidate industrial consolidated bioprocess (CBP) biocatalyst for lignocellulosic bioethanol production. However, C. thermocellum is relatively sensitive to ethanol compared to yeast. Previous studies have investigated the membrane and protein composition of wild-type and ethanol tolerant strains, but relatively little is known about the genome changes associated with the ethanol tolerant C. thermocellum strain. In this study, C. thermocellum cultures were grown to mid-exponential phase and then either shocked with the supplementation of ethanol to a final concentration of 3.95 g/L (equal to 0.5% [v/v]) or were untreated. Samples were taken pre-shock and 2, 12, 30, 60, 120, 240 min post-shock for multiple systems biology analyses. The addition of ethanol dramatically reduced the C. thermocellum growth and the final cell density was approximately half of the control fermentations, with concomitant reductions in substrate consumption in the treated cultures. The response of C. thermocellum to ethanol was dynamic and involved more than six hundred genes that were significantly and differentially expressed between the different conditions over time and every functional category was represented. Cellobiose was accumulated within the ethanol-shocked C. thermocellum cells, as well as the sugar phosphates such as fructose-6-P and cellobiose-6-P. The comparison and correlation among intracellular metabolites, proteomic and transcriptomics profiles as well as the ethanol effects on cellulosome, hydrogenase glycolysis and nitrogen metabolism are discussed, which led us to propose that C. thermocellum may utilize the nitrogen metabolism to bypass the arrested carbon metabolism in responding to ethanol stress shock, and the nitrogen metabolic pathway and redox balance may be the key target for improving ethanol tolerance and production in C. thermocellum. A thirty array study using total RNA recovered from wild-type cultures of Clostridium thermocellum at different time points of 0, 12, 30, 60, 120, and 240 min post-inoculation with 3.95 g/L [0.5% (v/v)] treatment compred to that of control without ethanol supplementation. Two biological replicates for treatment and control condition.

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Understanding the Regulatory Networks of Three LacI Transcriptional Repressors in Clostridium thermocellum DSM1313

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