Industrial Microbiology Organisms: Selection and Improvement Recap on Thursday’s lecture  Large and Small Scale Processes  Improving the Process- Titre, Yield and VP  Primary and.

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Transcript Industrial Microbiology Organisms: Selection and Improvement Recap on Thursday’s lecture  Large and Small Scale Processes  Improving the Process- Titre, Yield and VP  Primary and.

Industrial Microbiology
Organisms: Selection and
Improvement
Recap on Thursday’s lecture
 Large
and Small Scale Processes
 Improving the Process- Titre, Yield and
VP
 Primary and Secondary Metabolites
 The Necessity for Growth
Lecture 2
 The
Organism and Mutants
Outline

Properties of useful industrial microorganisms

Finding and selecting your microorganism

Improving the microorganism’s properties


Conquering the cell’s control systems
Storing industrial micro-organisms – the
culture collection
Properties of a Useful
Industrial Microorganism

It must Produce the product!


But yield and titre may need subsequent
improvement. Get the product on the market first
and then improve!
Grows fast and produces product in large
scale culture.

Resulting requirements for growth factors etc.
usually acceptable. Sometimes can only get
biomass / product yield required in small scale due
to aeration difficulties in larger fermenter.
Properties of a Useful
Industrial Microorganism

Compatibility with substrates.


May require subsequent modification of medium
or organism e.g. v. low iron levels are required for
citric acid production by Aspergillus.
Ease of genetic manipulation.


Genome known.
Gene transfer systems available.

Genetically stable.
 Safe….Bacillus anthricis?
 Well known industrially.

Could take genes for product formation and insert
them into an industrial “workhorse”
(Saccharomyces, Bacillus etc.).
Also Worth Considering:

Yeasts and fungi can withstand higher initial
concentrations of carbon substrates
especially sugars
 Product tolerance…will acid build up kill the
organism?
 Product location – is product excreted?

Excretion e.g. amylases




Retention inside the cell e.g. B-glucosidase in
yeast


Can improve product tolerance(higher titres and yields).
Easier purification (especially proteins).
Essential for correct form of some recombinant products.
i.e. folding of protein
Can assist product concentration.
Ease of microorganism/medium separation vis a vis
viscosity or organism density (brewing)
Sources of Potential Industrial
Microorganisms

Culture collections.


Public e.g. NCCLS
Private i.e. within industry

Existing processes often yield hyperproducing strains due to self mutation…these
may appear different on plates.

The natural environment – Biodiscovery.
Biodiscovery

To “strike it rich” try
environments that:




Have high biodiversity
Are extreme
Are unexplored
Encourage the
dominance of suitable
organisms
Biodiscovery: DNA Route

Collect isolates or go the
“DNA route”:




Make total community DNA
extracts – can screen at this
level or:
Put fragments (random or
selected) into a suitable host.
Screen these recombinant
organisms.
Artificial chromosomes (BACs
and YACs) can carry whole
pathways.
Screening

Selecting the useful organisms/genes from a
vast number of possibilities during process
development or improvement
 Can operate at the cell or gene (DNA) level
 Make task easier by



Keeping initial assays simple or capable of high
throughput
Eliminate the useless before working on the useful
Get rid of duplicates (especially when working with
DNA)
Screening
More complex studies.
Medium/process
optimisation, genetic
stability etc.
Decreasing No. of
Isolates
Simple/High
throughput assays
High Throughput screening

Use of cell sorters,
multiwell plates,
DNA chips and
robotics
 System shown can
handle 3,000-10,000
assays per day
www.degussa.com/en/inno
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Strain Improvement

Essential when setting up a new process or
maintaining the competitiveness of an
existing one. Strive to improve growth or yield
of the strains you use.
Note
Organisms, medium and process will be
discussed separately during this course, but
they must always be considered TOGETHER
when developing or improving an industrial
process.
Improvement in Antibiotic Titre
Titre
Year
Obtaining improved strains

Select from existing populations

Mutation using chemicals or radiation

“Classical” Genetics: conjugation, Transposon,
transduction, etc.

Genetic Engineering….strain construction, plasmid
vectors, temperature sensitive promoters, gene
shuffling using cassettes etc.
Conquering Cell Control Systems
Substrate
Induction

Enzyme
Immediate or final
product
Inhibition/Repression
stops or reduces enzyme activity
Cells normally have control mechanisms
which avoids unnecessary production of
enzymes and metabolic intermediates.
 We must manipulate or destroy these to
ensure overproduction of the desired
enzyme.
Induction
Substrate
Induction
Enzyme
Immediate or
subsequent
product
Inhibition/Repression

Enzyme is only produced in the presence of an
inducer (usually the substrate).
 Our strategy:


Use constitutive mutants.
Supply an inducer in the medium (discussed later).
Constitutive Mutants

Produce an inducible enzyme in the absence
of its inducer thus the enzyme is never
switched off. Lactose induces the Lac operon
producing B-Gal. Glucose switches off the
operon. In a constitutive mutant glucose
never switches off B-Gal production.
Lactose ---------------------------> Glucose + Galactose
ß-galactosidase
Enrich populations for
constitutive mutants by:
 Chemostat
cultures where the
enzyme substrate is the limiting
nutrient (e.g. lactose)
The Chemostat
Enrich populations for
constitutive mutants by:
 Sequential
batch cultures alternating
use of the inducing substrate as a
nutrient with use of an alternate nutrient.
 Example:
sequential cultures of
Escherichia coli alternating lactose and
glucose will enrich for mutants constitutive
for beta galactosidase.
Finding Constitutive Mutants
 Select
constitutive isolates by their ability
to grow:
 When
the sole carbon source (e.g. Lactose)
is a substrate for the enzyme but does not
induce it. Enzyme is switched on in presence
of both Lactose and Glucose
Inhibition/Repression
Substrate
Enzyme
Induction

Inhibition/Repression
Build up of enzyme product (or another
intermediate or end product further down the
metabolic pathway):



Immediate or
subsequent
product
Switches off enzyme activity (inhibition).
Switches off enzyme production (repression).
Our strategy:


Avoid build-up of inhibitor/repressor.
Find mutants lacking inhibition/repression control.
Avoiding Build-up of Inhibitors
and Repressors
 Modifying
pathways to avoid
inhibitor/repressor build-up.
 Simple
pathway example: lysine production
by Aerobacter aerogenes.
 Branched pathway example: lysine
production by Corynebacteium glutamicum
and effect of progressive and concretive
inhibition
Simple Pathway: The Lysine
Pathway in Aerobacter
aerogenes
Glycerol
L,L DAP
Meso DAP
L-lysine + CO2
Feedback
Control
 In
normal cells, feedback control stops
the build up of lysine by acting at an
early stage in the pathway
Lysine Production using
Aerobacter aerogenes
 A dual
fermentation is used:
 Cultures
of two different strains (A & B) are
grown up separately and then added
together in the presence of acetone which
breaks down permeability barriers and
allows the cell contents to mix.
Strain A
Glycerol
 Cannot
L,L DAP
Meso DAP
L-lysine + CO2
convert Meso DAP to l-lysine
 Grow in medium with plenty of glycerol
and limiting amounts of lysine
 Large amounts of L,L and Meso DAP
build up
Strain B
 The
normal wild type strain.
 Growth does not produce build up of
lysine or intermediates.
 Cells contain all pathway enzymes
including that missing in strain A.
What happens when the
cultures are mixed:
 The
mixture contains:
 Large
amounts of L,L and Meso DAP (from
strain A).
 The enzymes necessary for their
conversion to lysine (from strain B).
 The
resultant is the production of large
quantities of lysine.
Feedback control in branched pathways:
Progressive and Concerted Control
 Product
levels at the end of branches
control the pathway at a point before
branching occurs.
Control Point
Feedback control in branched
pathways

Controls can be complex, but fall into two broad
groups:


Control is progressive – build up of one end product
causes partial switch off – further switch off occurs if
there is build up at the end of another branch and so
on.
Control is concerted – no switch off unless products
at the end of several branches build up – complete
switch off then occurs.
The Lysine Pathway in
Corynebacterium glutamicum
Aspartate
Aspartate semi-aldehyde
Lysine
Homoserine
Methionine
CONCERTED
CONTROL
Threonine
Isoleucine
NOTE
 No
switch off occurs unless BOTH
lysine and threonine build up
Lysine production using
Corynebacterium glutamicum
Aspartate
Aspartate semi-aldehyde
Lysine
Homoserine
Methionine
Threonine
Isoleucine
 Use
a mutant that cannot convert
aspartate semi-aldehyde to homoserine
Lysine production using
Corynebacterium glutamicum
 Medium
must contain limited amount of
homoserine
 Threonine levels will remain low, so no
control will be exercised when high
levels of lysine build up
Finding Mutants which do not
recognise Inhibitors &
Repressors

Isolate mutants which have lost an enzyme
and then screen these mutants for revertants
e.g. Isolate a Lactose-negative E. coli and then
look for mutants that can use lactose.

Select strains which can grow in the presence
of a compound very similar to a product or
intermediary (an analogue) which:



Mimics its control properties
Is not metabolised
e.g. IPTG (isopropyl-B-D-thiogalactoside) turns on
lactose operon but cannot be used as a substrate
by B-galactosidase
Catabolite repression
 When
readily utilised carbon sources
are available to organisms catabolite
repression may occur
 May
override induction mechanisms
 Whole pathways my be switched off
Catabolite Repression
(Glucose Effect)
galactosidase
- glucose
Glucose
added
+ glucose
Time (hr)
+ lactose
Avoiding Problems with
Catabolite Repression
 Use
 Use
fed batch cultures (discussed later)
mutants which lack catabolite
repression i.e. can grow in high levels of
glucose and still express galactosidase
Your Strains
How
to Maintain them so they
do not mutate
The “In House” Culture
Collection

Source material for
R & D.
 Strain preservation
during screening
and optimisation.
 Starter cultures for
production.
The “In House” Culture
Collection

Isolates must remain.



Uncontaminated.
True to their known
characteristics, both
qualitative and
quantitative.
Starters must be
provided in a suitable
and active form.
The “In House” Culture
Collection
 To
avoid changes due to mutation and
selection:
 Avoid
excessive growth and subcuture.
 Store strains in an inactive state.
 Keep
adequate backup stocks.
 Keep full records of characteristics and
validate strains periodically.
Some storage methods.




Lyophilisation (freeze
dried stocks)
Glycerol suspensions at
–80oc to -196oc
Freeze onto cryobeads
(The Protect system)
Agar slope cultures
overlaid with mineral oil
and stored at –20oc