Engineered Bacterial Microcompartments Could Enhance Microbial Production of Biofuels
09 June 2010
Scientists at the University of Kent (UK) and University College Cork (Ireland) have manipulated simple bacteria into constructing internal empty bacterial microcompartments (BMC) from five shell proteins in which biofuels or vaccines could be produced. A paper on the work was published in the journal Molecular Cell.
These micro-compartments eventually occupy almost 70% of the available space in a bacteria cell, enabling segregation of metabolic activities and, in the era of synthetic biology, representing an important tool by which defined micro-environments can be created for specific metabolic functions.
Synthetic biology is really exciting because we can produce some important and useful products that can be difficult and expensive to make using traditional chemistry techniques. Bacteria can make these things very easily and in large quantities if we develop bacteria with the right characteristics to do so efficiently.
What we often do is to make sure that the desired product is made within one or more tiny compartments that already exist inside the bacteria. This means that the process doesn’t get caught up or slowed down by everything else that is going on in the cell and so is much more efficient.
—Martin Warren, Professor of Biochemistry at the School of Biosciences, University of Kent
It is envisaged that these micro-compartments could be modified for the synthesis of ethanol or even hydrogen gas. The team is currently working on ways to produce new antibiotics within these compartments.
Using these compartments, simple bacteria like E.coli can make chemicals that would normally be deadly for them. The bacteria are partially protected because the chemicals are being made within compartments inside their cells. We are working on ways to use these ‘factories’ to produce substances that will kill other harmful bacteria.
—Michael Prentice, Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University College Cork
The research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Science Foundation Ireland.
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