微生物学技术

A noncarotenogenic microbe E. coli was engineered for high production of carotenoids. To increase the isoprenoid flux, the chromosomal native promoters of the rate-controlling steps (dxs, idi and ispDispF) in the isoprenoid pathway were replaced with a strong bacteriophage T5 promot ...

Our laboratory specializes in directed protein evolution, i.e., evolution of proteins under defined selective pressures in the laboratory. Our target genes are encoded in ColE1 plasmids to facilitate the generation of libraries in vivo. We have observed that when random mutations are not ...

There is increasing interest in utilization of engineered microorganisms for the production of renewable chemicals and next-generation biofuels. However, imbalances between the cofactor consumption of the engineered production pathway and the reducing equivalents pro ...

Cellulose is an easily renewable and highly occurring resource. To take advantage of this great potential, there is a constant need of new cellulose degrading enzymes. In industrial applications enzymes have to function under extreme conditions like high temperature, very acidic or bas ...

Phage infections in bacterial bioprocesses constitute one of the most devastating threats to the productivity of the biotechnology facilities. There are several factors, which can decide if an infection would occur, and if it would turn into an outbreak and heavy contamination of the prod ...

Escherichia coli is the most commonly used microorganism for production of recombinant proteins for different applications. Acetate accumulation during aerobic growth on glucose has significant negative impact on recombinant protein production in Escherichia coli. Vari ...

A cornerstone of Synthetic Biology is the engineering of gene regulatory networks. Construction of such biological circuits has been used not only to elucidate the dynamics of gene expression but also for designing whole-cell biosensors that translate environmental signals into qu ...

Lignocellulosic biomass is a potential feedstock for bioethanol production. Biomass hydrolysates, prepared with a procedure including pretreatment and hydrolysis, are considered to be used as fermentation media for microorganisms, such as yeast. During the hydrolysate pre ...

While large amount of strains can be quickly generated via metabolic engineering, the speed/efficiency of evaluating each strain becomes the bottleneck in the process from strain development to final production. In this chapter, a method is introduced to rapidly evaluate strain perfo ...

Industrial biotechnology employs microorganisms (strains) for manufacture of certain food or industrial products to meet the increasing need of the world. To develop a bioproduction process, the first step is to screen out a production strain from isolated, mutated, or genetically en ...

Metabolic engineers modify biological systems through the use of modern molecular biology tools in order to obtain desired phenotypes. However, due to the extreme complexity and interconnectedness of metabolism in all organisms, it is often difficult to a priori predict which changes ...

Many proteins and peptides have been used in therapeutic or industrial applications. They are often produced as recombinant forms by microbial fermentation. Targeted metabolic engineering of the production strains has usually been the approach taken to increase protein product ...

A program of mutation and screening, with stepwise reverse engineering or “decoding” of the improved strain, is a way to better understand the genetics and physiology of the strain improvement process. As more is learned about the genetics of strain improvement, it is hoped that more fundament ...

The production of biofuels from renewable sources by microbial engineering has gained increased attention due to energy and environmental concerns. Butanol is one of the important gasoline-substitute fuels and can be produced by native microorganism Clostridium acetobutyli ...

Discrete mathematical formalisms are well adapted to model large biological networks, for which detailed kinetic data are scarce. This chapter introduces the reader to a well-established qualitative (logical) framework for the modelling of regulatory networks. Relying on GINs ...

Graph theory analysis of biological networks, such as protein–protein interactions (PPIs), gene regulatory, metabolic, etc., has identified a strong relationship between topology of these networks and the underlying cellular function and biological processes (Sharan et al. Mol ...

MCL is a general purpose cluster algorithm for both weighted and unweighted networks. The algorithm utilises network topology as well as edge weights, is highly scalable and has been applied in a wide variety of bioinformatic methods. In this chapter, we give protocols and case studies for clust ...

Data from high-throughput experimental methods are currently being used to construct complex biological networks. These include regulatory gene networks, regulatory protein–DNA networks, protein–protein interaction networks, or metabolic networks. Independent of i ...

The degree distribution has been viewed as an important characteristic of network data. Many biological networks have been labelled scale-free as their degree distribution can be approximately described by a power-law probability distribution. This chapter presents a formal sta ...

The ability to analyze large biological networks proves to be a computationally expensive task, but the information one can gain is worth the cost and effort. In cancer research for example, one is able to derive knowledge about putative drug targets by revealing the strengths and weaknesses in ...