Project description:Its characteristic rose-like aroma makes phenylethanol a popular ingredient in foods, beverages and cosmetics. Microbial production of phenylethanol currently relies on whole-cell bioconversion of phenylalanine with yeasts that harbor an Ehrlich pathway for phenylalanine catabolism. Complete biosynthesis of phenylethanol from a cheap carbon source such as glucose provides an economically attractive alternative for phenylalanine bioconversion. In this study, a Synthetic Genetic Array screening was applied to identify genes involved in regulation of phenylethanol synthesis in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The screen focused on transcriptional regulation of ARO10, which encodes the major decarboxylase involved in conversion of phenylpyruvate to phenylethanol. A deletion in ARO8, which encodes an aromatic amino acid transaminase, was found to cause a transcriptional upregulation of ARO10 during growth with ammonium sulfate as the sole nitrogen source. Physiological characterization revealed that the aro8M-oM-^AM-^D mutation led to substantial changes in the absolute and relative intracellular concentrations of amino acids. Moreover, deletion of ARO8 led to de novo production of phenylethanol during growth on a glucose synthetic medium with ammonium as the sole nitrogen source. The aro8 mutation also stimulated phenylethanol production when combined with other, previously documented mutations that deregulate aromatic amino acid biosynthesis in S. cerevisiae. The resulting engineered S. cerevisiae strain produced over 3 mM of phenylethanol from glucose during growth on a simple synthetic medium. The strong impact of a transaminase deletion on intracellular amino acid concentrations opens new possibilities for yeast-based production of amino acid-derived products. The goal of the present study was to identify genes that influence the transcriptional (de)repression of the Ehrlich pathway during growth with ammonium as the nitrogen source. With the aid of Synthetic Genetic Array technology, we constructed a strain collection in which deletions in the non-essential genes in the S. cerevisiae genome were combined with a reporter plasmid comprising the ARO10 promoter fused to a reporter gene (egfp) encoding a fluorescent reporter protein. After screening by flow cytometry, deletion of ARO8 led to a deregulated expression from the ARO10 promoter. The impact of this deletion was further studied by transcriptome and intracellular metabolite analyses. Furthermore, phenylethanol production was measured in strains that combined the aro8 mutation with mutations that were previously shown to deregulate aromatic amino acid biosynthesis.

Project description:Different transcriptome, metabolome, and phosphoproteome studies have already indicated a regulatory role of Ser/Thr phosphorylation in the central metabolism of S. aureus. However, it remains still unknown how this exactly tunes its metabolism. For that reason, Extreme Pathway Analysis was used to understand metabolic flux regulation by Ser/Thr phosphorylation. YANAsquare software and YANAvergence routine were chosen to calculate pathway activities of WT, ΔpknB, Δstp, and double mutant S. aureus NewmanHG strains. Gene expression data of S. aureus NewmanHG were collected taking the wild type and mutations of kinase (pknB), phosphatase (stp) or both (pknB/stp) phenotypes. The resulting flux changes were modelled with YANAvergence taking the different gene expression data and an established genome scale model of S. aureus metabolic modes as basis. The fluxes of the different strains were next calculated, taking the gene expression data into account. A concerted metabolic change of fluxes was observed. In particular the pathways for peptidoglycan, nucleotide, and aromatic amino acid synthesis as well as catabolism involving aspartate transaminase (GOT) changed significantly compared to the wild type. Single mutations of pknB and stp were compared to illustrate their different contribution to the phenotype, e.g. pyrimidine synthesis is dramatically impaired by pknB deletion but much less by loss of stp. In the double knock out strain, there is higher activity of peptidoglycan, purine, and aromatic amino acids synthesis from glucose, but lower activity of pyrimidine synthesis from glucose compared to WT. The results suggest a probable regulatory role of Ser/Thr phosphorylation in amino acid catabolism and the glycolysis/gluconeogenesis switch to provide the cell with sufficient cell wall components, nucleotides, and aromatic amino acids. Yvck is suggested to serve as regulatory protein linking Ser/Thr phosphorylation to the previous results of S. aureus metabolism. Moreover, Yvck seems in particular to be involved in the switch between glycolysis and gluconeogenesis. However, further studies based on experimental approaches are needed to demonstrate that Ser/Thr phosphorylation and Yvck are necessary for a correct cell growth under gluconeogenic conditions. The metabolic model allows not only a comprehensive representation of these changes for all involved pathways in the four strains, it further points out the function of the previously unannotated ycvk operon.. The relevance of these specific metabolic pathway adaptations regarding the pathogenicity of S.aureus and their contributions to the infection process will be analyzed and discussed.

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Saccharomyces cerevisiae

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