Experimental evidence for growth advantage and metabolic shift stimulated by photophosphorylation of proteorhodopsin expressed in Escherichia coli at anaerobic condition. Issue 5 (20th January 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wang, Ying; Li, Yan; Xu, Tuan; Shi, Zhenyu; Wu, Qiong
• Is Part Of: Biotechnology and bioengineering. Volume 112:Issue 5(2015:May)
• Page Start: 947
• Page End: 956
• Publication Date: 2015-01-20
• Subjects: Proteorhodopsin -- photophosphorylation -- solar energy -- heme -- growth -- anaerobic fermentation; Biotechnology -- Periodicals; Bioengineering -- Periodicals; 660.6
• DOI: 10.1002/bit.25504
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0006-3592

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Since solar light energy is the source of all renewable biological energy, the direct usage of light energy by bacterial cell factory has been a very attractive concept, especially using light energy to promote anaerobic fermentation growth and even recycle low‐energy carbon source when energy is the limiting factor. Proteorhodopsin(PR), a light‐driven proton pump proven to couple with ATP synthesis when expressed heterogeneously, is an interesting and simple option to enable light usage in engineered strains. However, although it was reported to influence fermentation in some cases, heterogeneous proteorhodopsin expression was never shown to support growth advantage or cause metabolic shift by photophosphorylation so far. Hereby, we presented the first experimental evidence that heterogeneously expressed proteorhodopsin can provide growth advantage and cause ATP‐dependent metabolism shift of acetate and lactate changes in Escherichia coli at anaerobic condition. Those discoveries suggest further application potential of PR in anaerobic fermentation where energy is a limiting factor. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2015;112: 947–956. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Abstract : The authors constructed a stable respiration deficient Escherichia coli platform for investigating proteorhodopsin (PR), by which growth promotion effect was observed with lactate as carbon source. The growth promotion effect was consistent to extra ATP generated by PR. On the other hand, PR was shown to cause metabolic shift of fermentation acids using glucose as carbon source. And ~300 PR‐mEos fusion proteins were observed on the E. coli cell membrane.