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Title: Prediction and characterization of promoters and ribosomal binding sites of Zymomonas mobilis in system biology era

Journal Article · · Biotechnology for Biofuels

Zymomonas mobilis is a model bacterial ethanologen with many systems biology studies reported. Besides lignocellulosic ethanol production, Z. mobilis has been developed as a platform for biochemical production through metabolic engineering. However, identification and rigorous understanding of the genetic origins of cellular function, especially those based in non-coding region of DNA, such as promoters and ribosomal binding sites (RBSs), are still in its infancy. This knowledge is crucial for the effective application of Z. mobilis to new industrial applications of biotechnology for fuels and chemicals production. In this study, we explored the possibility to systematically predict the strength of promoters based on systems biology datasets. The promoter strength was clustered based on the expression values of downstream genes (or proteins) from systems biology studies including microarray, RNA-Seq and proteomics. Candidate promoters with different strengths were selected for further characterization, which include 19 strong, nine medium, and ten weak ones. A dual reporter-gene system was developed which included appropriate reporter genes. These are the opmCherry reporter gene driven by the constitutive PlacUV5 promoter for calibration, and EGFP reporter gene driven by candidate promoters for quantification. This dual reporter-gene system was confirmed using the inducible promoter, Ptet, which was used to determine the strength of these predicted promoters with different strengths. In addition, the dual reporter-gene system was applied to determine four synthetic RBSs with different translation initiation rates based on the prediction from bioinformatics server RBS calculator. Our results showed that the correlations between the prediction and experimental results for the promoter and RBS strength are relatively high, with R2 values more than 0.7 and 0.9, respectively. This study not only identified and characterized 38 promoters and four RBSs with different strengths for future metabolic engineering in Z. mobilis, but also established a flow cytometry-based dual reporter-gene system to characterize genetic elements including, but not limited to the promoters and RBSs studied in this work. This study also suggested the feasibility of predicting and selecting candidate genetic elements based on omics datasets and bioinformatics tools. Moreover, the dual reporter-gene system developed in this study can be utilized to characterize other genetic elements of Z. mobilis, which can also be applied to other microorganisms.

Research Organization:
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Sustainable Transportation Office. Bioenergy Technologies Office
Grant/Contract Number:
AC36-08GO28308
OSTI ID:
1506610
Report Number(s):
NREL/JA-2700-73636
Journal Information:
Biotechnology for Biofuels, Vol. 12, Issue 1; ISSN 1754-6834
Publisher:
BioMed CentralCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 27 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (7)

Identification and characterization of ethanol‐inducible promoters of Zymomonas mobilis based on omics data and dual reporter–gene system journal December 2019
Characterization and repurposing of the endogenous Type I-F CRISPR–Cas system of Zymomonas mobilis for genome engineering journal October 2019
Discovery and Characterization of Native Deinococcus radiodurans Promoters for Tunable Gene Expression journal August 2019
Establishment and application of a CRISPR–Cas12a assisted genome-editing system in Zymomonas mobilis journal October 2019
Metabolic engineering of Zymomonas mobilis for anaerobic isobutanol production journal January 2020
Multiple Small RNAs Interact to Co-regulate Ethanol Tolerance in Zymomonas mobilis journal March 2020
Transcriptomic Profiles of Zymomonas mobilis 8b to Furfural Acute and Long-Term Stress in Both Glucose and Xylose Conditions journal January 2020