iDEC 2023 | OUC_DE
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Introduction

Bistability is a fundamental property of engineering and natural systems, with the ability to switch and maintain states. Prokaryotes couple the input and utilization of metabolites with feedback-regulated genetic circuits by constructing bistable switches, using inducible transcriptional and enzymatic components to create hybrid systems, which allow us to regulate the pathway easily[1]. All bistable switches developed so far, however, control the expression of target genes without access to other layers of the cellular machinery[2]. The binding of repressor proteins and operons can lead to incomplete pathway repression due to different selection and concentration of inducers, which affects the regulation of metabolic pathways by bistable switches[3]. Our experiment enhances the binding strength between the repressor protein and DNA by optimizing the switch[4], achieving lower basal level expression, induced high-level expression, and ultimately achieving bistable expression of the target gene.
This method has great potential to expand the functionality of biomolecular devices and can be used to separate growth and production processes during fermentation. Based on the specificity of hyaluronic acid produced by multiple metabolic pathways, we applied the designed bistable switch to regulate the carbon flow direction of engineering bacteria fermenting hyaluronic acid and tested the degree of performance improvement after optimizing the switch. We attempted to construct a bistable switch using ordinary Escherichia coli. Due to the production of hyaluronic acid by the precursors UDP-glucuronic acid and UDP N-acetyl-glucosamine in the glucose metabolism pathway of E. coli under the action of hasA, we plan to use arabinose operons to regulate the galU and udg gene pathways in the UDP-glucuronic acid biosynthesis pathway of E. coli; In the biosynthesis pathway of UDP-N-acetyl-glucosamine, tetracycline operons are used to regulate gene pathways such as glmU, glmS, and glmM[5]. We plan to regulate the ratio of opening of the two pathways by changing the concentration of added inducers arabinose and dehydrated tetracycline, and during the growth process, make the metabolic pathway more inclined towards growth-related pathways, allowing the strain to grow rapidly first. During the fermentation process, the metabolic pathway is biased towards the pathway that produces fermentation products, allowing the strain to produce a large amount of fermentation products. In the testing phase, we used GFP instead of the relevant genes in order to more accurately and quickly detect the performance of the mutants. After the design of the bistable switch was completed, we used error-prone PCR and computer simulation to evolve araC and tetR genes directly, to optimize the bistable switch, increase its ability to inhibit protein binding to DNA, reduce promoter leakage, and increase the performance of the bistable switch.

References

[1] Huang D, Holtz WJ, Maharbiz MM. A genetic bistable switch utilizing nonlinear protein degradation. J Biol Eng. 2012 Jul 9;6(1):9. https://doi.org/10.1186/1754-1611-6-9 PMID: 22776405; PMCID: PMC3439342.
[2] Oyarzún DA, Chaves M. Design of a bistable switch to control cellular uptake. J R Soc Interface. 2015 Dec 6;12(113):20150618. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2015.0618 PMID: 26674196; PMCID: PMC4707844.
[3] Rolf Lutz, Hermann Bujard, Independent and Tight Regulation of Transcriptional Units in Escherichia Coli Via the LacR/O, the TetR/O and AraC/I1-I2 Regulatory Elements, Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 25, Issue 6, 1 March 1997, Pages 1203–1210, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/25.6.1203
[4] von Hippel PH, Revzin A, Gross CA, Wang AC. Non-specific DNA binding of genome regulating proteins as a biological control mechanism: I. The lac operon: equilibrium aspects. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1974 Dec;71(12):4808-12. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.71.12.4808 PMID: 4612528; PMCID: PMC433986.
[5] Woo JE, Seong HJ, Lee SY, Jang YS. Metabolic Engineering of Escherichia coli for the Production of Hyaluronic Acid From Glucose and Galactose. Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2019 Nov 21;7:351. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2019.00351 PMID: 31824939; PMCID: PMC6881274.