Protein-based condensates have been proposed to accelerate biochemical reactions by enriching reactants and enzymes simultaneously. Here, we engineered those condensates into a Photo-Activated Switch in E. coli (PhASE) to regulate enzymatic reactions via tuning the spatial correlation of enzymes and substrates. In this system, scaffold proteins undergo liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) to form light-responsive compartments. Tethered with a light-responsive protein, enzymes of interest (EOIs) can be recruited by those compartments from cytosol within only a few seconds after a pulse of light induction and fully released in 15 minutes. Furthermore, we managed to enrich small molecular substrates simultaneously with enzymes in the compartments and achieved the acceleration of luciferin and catechol oxidation by 2.3 folds and 1.6 folds, respectively. We also developed a quantitative model to guide the further optimization of this de-mixed regulatory system. Our tool can thus be used to study the rapid redistribution of proteins, and reversibly regulate enzymatic reactions in E. coli.

Immobilized enzymes have drawn widespread attention due to the enhanced stability, easy separation from reaction mixture, and the prominent recyclability. Nevertheless, it is still an ongoing challenge to develop potent immobilization techniques which are capable of stable enzyme encapsulation, minimal loss of activity, and modulability for various enzymes and applications. Here, microfibers with tunable size and composition were fabricated using a home-made microfluidic device. These microfibers were able to efficiently encapsulate bovine serum albumin (BSA), glucose oxidase (GOX) and horseradish peroxidase (HRP). But the physically adsorbed enzymes readily diffused from microfibers into the catalytic reaction system. The leakage of enzymes could be substantially inhibited by conjugating to polyacrylic acid (PAA) and incorporating into the alginate-based microfibers, enabling stable immobilization, improved recyclability, and enhanced thermostability. In addition, GOX and HRP-loaded microfibers were fabricated under the optimized conditions for the visual detection of glucose using the cascade reaction of these enzymes, showing sensitive color change to glucose with concentration range of 0-2 mM. Due to the tunability and versatility, this microfluidic-based microfiber platform may provide a valuable approach to the enzyme immobilization for the cascade catalysis and diagnoses with multiple clinical markers.

The chloroplast represents an attractive compartment for light-driven biosynthesis of recombinant products, and advanced synthetic biology tools are available for engineering the chloroplast genome (=plastome) of several algal and plant species. However, producing commercial lines will likely require several plastome manipulations, and this will present issues with respect to selectable markers: there are a limited number of markers available, these can be used only once in a serial engineering strategy, and it is undesirable to retain marker genes for antibiotic resistance in the final transplastome. To address these problems, we have designed a rapid iterative marker system for the green microalga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii that allows creation of marker-free transformants starting from wild-type strains. The system employs a dual marker encoding a fusion protein of E. coli aminoglycoside adenyltransferase (conferring spectinomycin resistance) and a variant of E. coli cytosine deaminase (conferring sensitivity to 5-fluorocytosine). Initial selection on spectinomycin allows stable transformants to be established and driven to homoplasmy. Subsequent selection on 5-fluorocytosine results in rapid loss of the dual marker through intramolecular recombination between the marker’s 3’UTR and the 3’UTR of the introduced transgene(s). We demonstrate the versatility of the CpPosNeg system by serial introduction of reporter genes into the plastome.

Axonal transport plays a significant role in the establishment of neuronal polarity, axon growth, and synapse formation during neuronal development. The axon of a naturally growing neuron is a highly complex and multifurcated structure with a large number of bends and branches. Nowadays, the study of dynamic axonal transport in morphologically complex neurons is greatly limited by the technological barrier. Here, a sparse gene transfection strategy was developed to locate fluorescent mCherry in the lysosome of primary neurons, thus enabling us to track the lysosome-based axonal transport with a single-particle resolution. Thereby, several axonal transport models were observed, including forward or backward transport model, stop-and-go model, repeated back-and-forth transport model, and cross-branch transport model. Then, the accurate single-particle velocity quantification by TrackMate revealed a highly heterogeneous and discontinuous transportation process of lysosome-based axonal transport in freely orientated axons. And, multiple physical factors, such as the axonal structure and the size of particles, were disclosed to affect the velocity of particle transporting in freely orientated axons. The combined single-particle fluorescence tracking and TrackMate assay can be served as a facile tool for evaluating axonal transport in neuronal development and axonal transport-related diseases.

Phaeodactylum tricornutum is a marine diatom, and well-studied model of unicellular microalga. This diatom contains a wide range of high-value renewables (HVRs) with high commercial relevance owing to their importance in human nutrition and health. In this study, we screened P. tricornutum for biomass, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and fucoxanthin production under photoautotrophic and mixotrophic condition with various substrate combinations. Results highlights that culture supplemented with glycerol and urea lead to enhanced biomass, biochemical and HVR production. Further continuous feeding of urea in glycerol supplemented medium results in an increase in biomass yield (0.77 g L-1) by ~ 2-fold. Additionally, continuous feeding of urea channelizes the carbon flux towards biosynthesis of fatty acids increasing FAME content by ~2-fold as compared to the control conditions. Overall EPA and fucoxanthin production was 27 mg L-1 and 11 mg L-1 (~2 & 4 fold) in urea fed cultures respectively. Present study demonstrates efficient valorization of cost-effective substrates such as glycerol and urea for the production of high-value renewables in P. tricornutum.

Cas9 nucleases have become the most versatile tool for genome editing projects in a broad range of organisms. The recombinant production of Cas9 nuclease is desirable for in vitro activity assays or the preparation of ribonucleoproteins (RNPs) for DNA-free genome editing approaches. For the rapid production of Cas9, we explored the use of a recently established cell-free lysate from tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) BY-2 cells. Using this system, the 130-kDa Cas9 nuclease from Staphylococcus aureus (SaCas9) was produced and subsequently purified via affinity chromatography. The purified apoenzyme was supplemented with ten different sgRNAs, and the nuclease activity was confirmed by the linearization of plasmid DNA containing cloned DNA target sequences.

The effects of climate change, soil depletion, a growing world population putting pressure on food safety and security are major challenges for agriculture in the 21st century. The breeding success of the green revolution has decelerated and current programs can only offset the yield affecting factors. New approaches are urgently needed and we propose, “Genome Editing accelerated Re-Domestication” (GEaReD) as a major new direction in plant breeding. By combining the upcoming technologies for phenotyping, omics and artificial intelligence with the promising new CRISPR-toolkits, this approach is closer than ever. Wild relatives of current crops are often adapted to harsh environments and have a high genetic diversity. Re-domestication of wild barley or teosinte could generate new cultivars adapted to environmental changes. De novo domestication of perennial relatives like Hordeum bulbosum could counter with soil depletion and increase soil carbon. Recent research already proved the principle of re-domestication in tomato and rice and therefore laid the foundation for GEaReD.

Genome editing and gene expression engineering using CRISPR-Cas systems in plants usually rely on labor-intensive tissue culture approaches to generate stably transformed plants that express the components of the reaction. Viral vectors have demonstrated to be a quick and effective alternative to express multiple guide RNAs, DNA templates for homologous recombination, and even Cas nucleases. Here we have developed an improved vector system based on tobacco rattle virus (TRV) to simplify logistics in genome editing and gene silencing approaches. The new system consists in a single Agrobacterium tumefaciens clone co-transformed with two compatible mini binary vectors from which TRV RNA1 and an engineered version of TRV RNA2 are expressed. Sequences of recombinant proteins, gene fragments for virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) or guide RNAs can be easily inserted by one-step digestion-ligation and homology-based cloning methods in the RNA2 plasmid to produce vectors with a size substantially smaller than usual. Using this new one-Agrobacterium TRV mini vector system, we show robust VIGS of an endogenous host gene after infiltration of bacterial suspensions at low optical densities, and efficient production of recombinant proteins in Nicotiana benthamiana. Most importantly, we also show highly efficient heritable genome editing in more than half of the seedling originating from inoculated N. benthamiana plants that express Cas9.

Sophorolipids (SLs) are regarded as one of the most promising biosurfactants. However, high production costs are the main obstacle to extended SLs application. Semi-continuous fermentation, which is based on in-situ separation, is a promising technology for achieving high SLs productivity. In this study, the sedimentation mechanism of SLs was analyzed. The formation of a hydrophobic mixture of SLs and rapeseed oil was a key factor in sedimentation. And the hydrophobicity and density of the mixture determined SLs sedimentation rate. On this basis, ultrasonic enhanced sedimentation technology (UEST) was introduced, by which the sedimentation rates were increased by 46.9% to 485.4% with different ratio of rapeseed oil to SLs. UEST-assisted real-time in-situ separation and semi-continuous fermentation were performed. SLs productivity and yield were 2.15 g/L/h and 0.58 g/g, respectively, simultaneously the loss ratio of cells, glucose, and rapeseed oil were significantly reduced. This study provides the new horizon for optimization of the SLs fermentation process.

Background: Epitope mapping is an increasingly important aspect of biotherapeutic and vaccine development. Recent advances in therapeutic antibody design and production has enabled candidate mAbs to be identified at a rapidly increasing rate resulting in a significant bottleneck in the characterization of ‘structural’ epitopes, that are challenging to determine using existing high throughput epitope mapping tools. Here, Hydrogen/Deuterium Exchange Mass Spectrometry (HDX-MS) epitope screening workflow was introduced that is well suited for accelerated characterization of epitopes with a common antigen. Main methods and major results: The method is demonstrated on set of 6 candidate mAbs targeting Pertactin (PRN). Using this approach, five of the six epitopes was unambiguously determined using two HDX mixing timepoints in 24 hours total run time, corresponding to substantial decrease in the instrument time required to map a single epitope using conventional HDX workflows. Conclusion: An accelerated HDX-MS epitope screening workflow was developed. The two-timepoint ‘screening’ workflow mapped all six mAbs and generated high confidence epitopes for five of the six mAbs assayed. The substantial improvement in the rate of data collection can advance HDX-MS for higher throughput investigations supporting the ability to evaluate a broader number of mAb candidates at an earlier stage of vaccine development.

In the attempt to bridge the widening gap from DNA sequence to biological function, we developed a novel methodology to assemble Long-Adapter Single-Strand Oligonucleotide (LASSO) probe libraries that enabled the massively multiplexed capture of kilobase-sized DNA fragments for downstream long read DNA sequencing or expression. This method uses short DNA oligonucleotides (pre-LASSO probes) and a plasmid vector that supplies the backbone for the mature LASSO probe through Cre-Loxp intramolecular recombination. This strategy generates high quality LASSO probes libraries (~46% of probes). We performed NGS analysis of the post-capture PCR amplification of DNA circles obtained from the LASSO capture of 3087 E.coli ORFs spanning from 400- to 4,000 bp. The median enrichment of all targeted ORFs versus untargeted ORFs was 30 times. For ORFs up to 1kb in size, targeted ORFs were enriched up to a median of 260-fold. Here, we show that LASSO probes obtained in this manner, are able to capture full-length open reading frames from total human cDNA. Furthermore, we show that the LASSO capture specificity and sensitivity is sufficient for target capture from total human genomic DNA template. This technology can be used for the preparation of long-read sequencing libraries and for massively multiplexed cloning of human sequences.

The production of recombinant proteins usually reduces cell fitness and the growth rate of producing cells. The growth disadvantage favors faster-growing non-producer mutants. Therefore, continuous bioprocessing is hardly feasible in Escherichia coli due to the high escape rate. We investigated the stability of E. coli expression systems under long-term production conditions and how metabolic load triggered by recombinant gene expression influences the characteristics of mutations. We conducted iterated fed-batch-like microbioreactor cultivations under production conditions. We used the easy-to-produce green fluorescent protein (GFP) and a challenging antigen-binding fragment (Fab) as model proteins, and BL21(DE3) and BL21Q strains as expression hosts. In comparative whole genome sequencing analyses, we identified mutations that allowed cells to grow unhindered despite recombinant protein production. A T7 RNA polymerase expression system is only conditionally suitable for long-term cultivation under production conditions. Mutations leading to non-producers occur in either the T7 RNA polymerase gene or the T7 promoter. The host RNA polymerase-based BL21Q expression system remained stable in the production of GFP in long-term cultivations. For the production of Fab, mutations in lacI of the BL21Q derivatives had positive effects on long-term stability. Our results indicate that adaptive evolution carried out with genome-integrated E. coli expression systems in microtiter cultivations under industrial relevant production conditions is an efficient strain development tool for production hosts.

Bioprocess optimization for cell-based therapies is a resource heavy activity. To reduce the associated cost and time, it is advantageous to carry out process development in small volume systems, with the caveat that such systems be predictive for process scaleup. The transport of oxygen from the gas phase into the culture medium, characterized using the volumetric mass transfer coefficient, kLa, has been identified as a critical parameter for predictive process scaleup. In both large- and small-scale bioreactors, kLa is controlled via mixing, with the method employed dependent upon the size of the reactor. However, existing microplate bioreactor platforms, beneficial for their low working volumes and throughput and automation capabilities, struggle to achieve desired kLa for mammalian cell cultures. Here, we describe the development and testing of a 96-well microplate with integrated Redbud Posts to provide mixing and thus enhanced kLa. Mixing characteristics were investigated, with actuating Redbud Posts shown (visually) to increase convective transport while producing enhanced kLa, providing means to mimic macroscale mammalian cell growth conditions at the microscale. Improved cell growth rates with mixing was demonstrated for two cell types, indicating the potential for this technology to play a valuable role in early stage bioprocess development and optimization.

Transient gene expression (TGE) using mammalian cells is an extensively used technology for production of antibodies and recombinant proteins and has been widely adapted by both academic and industrial labs. Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells have become one of the major work horses for TGE of recombinant antibodies due to their attractive features: post-translational modifications, adaptation to high cell densities, and use of serum-free media. In this study, we describe the optimization of parameters for TGE for antibodies from CHO cells. Through a matrix evaluation of multiple factors including inoculum, transfection conditions, amount and type of DNA used and post-transfection culture conditions, we arrived at an optimized process with higher titer and reduced costs and time, thus increasing the overall efficiency of early antibody material supply. We investigated the amount of coding DNA and the influence of size of the transfection complex on the in vitro efficiency of the transfection. Generation of the transfection complex in serum-free medium leads to the prompt formation of an optimal-sized polyplex, and is independent of the relative amount of coding DNA used for a successful transfection outcome.

As a milestone in soft and hard tissue engineering, a precise control over the micropatterns of scaffolds have lightened new opportunities for the recapitulation of native body organs through 3D bioprinting approaches. Well-printable bioinks are pre-requisites for the bioprinting of tissues/organs where hydrogels play a critical role. Despite the outstanding developments in 3D engineered microstructures, current printer devices, suffer from the risk of exposing loaded living agents to mechanical (nozzle-based) and thermal (nozzle-free) stresses. Thus, tuning the rheological, physical, and mechanical properties of hydrogels are promising solutions to address these issues. The relationship between the mechanical characteristics of hydrogels and their printability is important to control printing quality and fidelity. Recent developments in defining this relationship have highlighted the decisive role of main additive manufacturing strategies. These strategies are applied to enhance the printing quality of scaffolds and determine the nurture of cellular morphology. In this regard, it is beneficial to use external and internal stabilization, photo curable biopolymers, and cooling substrates containing the printed scaffolds. The objective of this study was to review cutting-edge developments in hydrogel-type bioinks and discuss the optimum simulation of the zonal stratification in osteochondral and cartilage units.

Benzoic acid is one of the most commonly used food preservatives, but currently exclusively produced in petrochemical processes. In this study, we describe a bio-based production pathway using an engineered strain of Pseudomonas taiwanensis. In a phenylalanine-overproducing strain, we heterologously expressed bacterial, yeast, and plant genes to achieve production of benzoate via a β-oxidation pathway. Strategic disruption of the native Pseudomonas benzoate degradation pathway further allowed the production of catechol and cis,cis-muconate. Taken together, this work demonstrates new routes for the microbial production of these industrially relevant chemicals from renewable resources.

Graphene quantum dots (GQDs), the latest member of graphene family, have attracted outstanding interest in the last few years, due to their outstanding physical, chemical, electrical, optical and biological properties. Their strong size-dependent photoluminescence (PL) and the presence of many reactive groups on the graphene surface allow their multimodal conjugation with therapeutic agents, targeting ligands, polymers, light responsive agents, fluorescent dyes, and functional nanoparticles, making them valuable agents for cancer diagnosis and treatment. In this review, the very recent advances covering the last three years on the applications of GQDs as drug delivery systems (DDS) and theranostic tools for anticancer therapy are discussed, highlighting the relevant factors which regulate their biocompatibility. Among these factors, the size, kind and degree of surface functionalization have shown to greatly affect their use in biological systems. Toxicity issues, which still represent an open challenge for the clinical development of GQDs based therapeutic agents, are also discussed at cellular and animal levels.

Substituted alkyl pyrazines - other than being extracted from various natural sources such as coffee beans, cocoa beans, nuts and vegetables - can be synthesized by the use of traditional chemical methods or by the help of certain microorganisms. The importance of pyrazines for food industry is expected to grow in the upcoming years due to the higher demand for ready meals, coffee and chocolate drinks; the roasty, nutty and earthy smell is reminiscent for coffee and cocoa depending on substitution and concentration of pyrazines. The growing awareness of people about the ingredients and the origin of their daily food has strongly influenced the market with labels like ’organic‘ and ’natural‘. Many flavor ingredients prepared by biotechnology methods have conquered the market in recent years and are destined to replace and optimize the ineffective (0.01% pyrazine/kg biomass) extraction from plants or animal sources. This overview focuses on the achievements and the upcoming challenges in pyrazine synthesis. Major parts deal with the extraction of natural products from sugar molasses, the chemical synthesis, fermentation by microorganisms and preparative methods by biocatalysis. The different types of production are decisive for the declaration and value of the final product and can span from 200-3500 $/kg for the synthetically produced or the naturally extracted 2,5-dimethylpyrazine, respectively.