A novel cell autolysis system for cost-competitive downstream processing

• Published in: Applied microbiology and biotechnology Vol. 100; no. 21; pp. 9103 - 9110
• Main Authors: Hajnal, Ivan, Chen, Xiangbin, Chen, Guo-Qiang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.11.2016; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Analysis; Autolysis; Bacteriolysis; Bacteriophage lambda - genetics; Binding sites; Binding sites (Biochemistry); Biodiesel fuels; Biofuels; Biological products; Biological Products - isolation & purification; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Bioplastics; Biosynthesis; Biotechnological Products and Process Engineering; Biotechnology; Biotechnology - economics; Biotechnology - methods; Cell interactions; Cells; Cloning; Costs and Cost Analysis; E coli; Escherichia coli; Escherichia coli - genetics; Escherichia coli - metabolism; Genes; Genes, Viral; Halomonas; Halomonas - genetics; Halomonas - metabolism; Laboratories; Life Sciences; Microbial Genetics and Genomics; Microbiology; Observations; Plastics; Proteins; Studies; Synthetic biology; Autolysis; PHA; Synthetic biology; PHB; Bioplastics; Halomonas
• ISSN: 0175-7598; 1432-0614
• DOI: 10.1007/s00253-016-7669-3

The industrial production of low value-added biological products poses significant challenges due to cost pressures. In recent years, it has been argued that synthetic biology approaches will lead to breakthroughs that eliminate price bottlenecks for the production of a wide range of biological products including bioplastics and biofuels. One significant bottleneck lies in the necessity to break the tough cell walls of microbes in order to release intracellular products. We here report the implementation of the first synthetic biology standard part based on the lambda phage SRRz genes and a synthetic ribosome binding site (RBS) that works in Escherichia coli and Halomonas campaniensis , which enables the producer strains to induce lysis after the addition of small amounts (1–5 %) of solvents or to spontaneously lyse during the stresses of downstream processing, and thus has the potential to eliminate the mechanical cell disruption step as both an efficiency bottleneck and a significant capex barrier when implementing downstream bioprocesses.