Project description:These data belong to a metabolic engineering project that introduces the reductive glycine pathway for formate assimilation in Cupriavidus necator. As part of this project we performed short-term evolution of the bacterium Cupriavidus necator H16 to grow on glycine as sole carbon and energy source. Some mutations in a putiative glycine transporting systems facilitated growth, and we performed transcriptomics on the evolved strain growing on glycine. Analysis of these transcriptomic data lead us to the discovery of a glycine oxidase (DadA6), which we experimentally demonstrated to play a key role in the glycine assimilation pathay in C. necator.
Project description:One-carbon (C1) feedstocks like formate could be energetically efficient substrates for sustainable microbial production of food, fuels and chemicals. Here, we replace the native energy-inefficient Calvin-Benson-Bassham (CBB) cycle in Cupriavidus necator with the more energy-efficient reductive glycine pathway for growth on formate and CO2. In chemostats, our engineered strain reaches a 17% higher biomass yield than the wild type, or any natural formatotroph using the Calvin cycle. This demonstrates the potential of synthetic metabolism to realize sustainable, bio-based production.