Title: Transfer of a Catabolic Pathway for Chloromethane in Methylobacterium Strains Highlights Different Limitations for Growth with Chloromethane or with Dichloromethane

Journal Article · · Frontiers in Microbiology
 [1];  [2];  [2];  [3]
  1. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States); Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States)
  2. Univ. of Strasbourg (France)
  3. Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States); Univ. of Idaho, Moscow, ID (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Chloromethane is an ozone-depleting gas, produced predominantly from natural sources, that provides an important environmental niche for microbes capable of consuming it. Chloromethane catabolism has been difficult to study owing to the challenging genetics of its native microbial hosts. Since the pathways for chloromethane catabolism show evidence of horizontal gene transfer, we reproduced this transfer process in the laboratory to generate new chloromethane-catabolizing strains in tractable hosts. Here, we demonstrate that six putative accessory genes improve chloromethane catabolism, though heterologous expression of only one of the six is strictly necessary for growth on chloromethane. In contrast to growth of Methylobacterium strains with the closely-related compound dichloromethane, we find that chloride export does not limit growth on chloromethane and, in general, that the ability of a strain to grow on dichloromethane is uncorrelated with its ability to grow on chloromethane. Finally, this heterologous expression system allows us to investigate the components required for effective chloromethane catabolism and the factors that limit effective catabolism after horizontal transfer.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1265893
Journal Information:
Frontiers in Microbiology, Journal Name: Frontiers in Microbiology Vol. 7; ISSN 1664-302X
Publisher:
Frontiers Research FoundationCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Development of an insertional expression vector system for Methylobacterium extorquens AM1 and generation of null mutants lacking mtdA and/or fch journal January 2004
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Elucidation of the Role of the Methylene-Tetrahydromethanopterin Dehydrogenase MtdA in the Tetrahydromethanopterin-Dependent Oxidation Pathway in Methylobacterium extorquens AM1 journal March 2013
Phylogeny Poorly Predicts the Utility of a Challenging Horizontally Transferred Gene in Methylobacterium Strains journal March 2014
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Cited By (6)

Microbial phenotypic heterogeneity in response to a metabolic toxin: Continuous, dynamically shifting distribution of formaldehyde tolerance in Methylobacterium extorquens populations journal November 2019
Methanol consumption drives the bacterial chloromethane sink in a forest soil journal July 2018
Diversity and composition of cave methanotrophic communities journal June 2022
Microbial phenotypic heterogeneity in response to a metabolic toxin: continuous, dynamically shifting distribution of formaldehyde tolerance in Methylobacterium extorquens populations journal September 2019
Rapid, Parallel Identification of Catabolism Pathways of Lignin-Derived Aromatic Compounds in Novosphingobium aromaticivorans journal September 2018
Microbial phenotypic heterogeneity in response to a metabolic toxin: Continuous, dynamically shifting distribution of formaldehyde tolerance in Methylobacterium extorquens populations journal November 2019

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