Difference between revisions of "Team:Marburg/Description"

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What does creating task specific lab strains, building a novel golden-gate based toolbox and envisioning a synthetic metabolic pathway have in common? <br>
 
All these approaches require intense theoretical groundwork. Many hours have to be spent with screening literature, summarizing the current state of knowledge and finally, developing own ideas. Constructs have to be designed and experiments have to be planned. <br>
 
All this preliminary work has to be completed before the lab work can be truly started. In addition to our initial theoretical work, we routinely iterated the steps: designing, building, testing and learning throughout the whole project. <br><br>
 
On this page, we want to provide you the theoretical groundwork that we did to design our projects. We want to demonstrate that we followed Synbio design principles and conceived our project based on the current state of knowledge.
 
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<h1>Overview of the Marburg Collection</h1>
 
A major goal of our project was to create a collection of characterized  parts for use in <i>V. natriegens </i>to provide other iGEM teams, as well as the whole scientific community a toolbox for the rational design of metabolic pathways, genetic circuits or any other DNA construct.<br>
 
Our toolbox was initially conceived for being used in <i>V. natriegens</i>. However, while designing the Marburg Collection, we realized that a toolbox with maximum flexibility can easily be used in more than one bacterial species. Because alternative bacterial chassis, apart from <i>E. coli</i>, are gaining increasing importance (Kim <i>et al.</i> 2016), a toolbox that is compatible with more than one bacterial species enables scientists to work with organisms that have the exact properties needed for specific applications. Our vision is to establish the Marburg Collection as the first broad-host range golden-gate-based cloning toolbox.<br>
 
<figure style="width: 40%; float: right">
 
        <img class="flexAssets" src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2018/e/e6/T--Marburg--Plasmid_assembly2.gif">
 
 
        <figcaption><b> Figure 1: LVL1 assembly using the Marburg Collection</b> <br> <i>De novo</i> assembly of LVL1 plasmids from eight basic parts.  </figcaption>
 
    </figure>
 
We investigated existing bacterial toolboxes like EcoFlex (Moore <i>et al. </i>2016), CIDAR (Iverson <i>et al.</i> 2016) and iGEMs PhytoBrick system, which is closely related to the GoldenBraid cloning (Sarrion-Perdigones <i>et al.</i> 2011). All these toolboxes are based on predefined vectors that preset the origin of replication and the antibiotic resistance cassette thus preventing their use in organisms that are not compatible with either feature. We wanted to give scientists the freedom of choice to select oris and resistance cassettes that suit their organisms and applications best. This flexibility is possible because our toolbox does not rely on classical “backbones” but instead functions by the complete <i>de novo </i>assembly of at least eight basic genetic parts. <br>
 
 
<br>
 
All basic parts like promoters or resistance parts are stored in LVL0 plasmids. The assembly of a plasmid comprising a single transcription unit is done by assembling at least eight parts resulting in one LVL1 plasmid. One to five LVL1 plasmids can then be used for a subsequent round of assembly to obtain a multigene LVL2 plasmid which could already harbor a full synthetic metabolic pathway consisting of up to five enzymes. Our toolbox even allows more rounds of assembly, each combining up to five constructs of the previous level. This enormous cloning capacity results theoretically in an  infinite number of transcription units that can be assembled in a small amount of time.
 
 
<figure style="width: 80%; float: center">
 
        <img class="flexAssets" src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2018/3/32/T--Marburg--Marburg_Collection.png">
 
 
        <figcaption><b> Figure 2: Hierarchical cloning is facilitated by subsequent Golden Gate reactions.</b> <br> Basic building blocks like promoters or terminators are stored in level 0 plasmids. Parts from each category of our collection can be chosen to built level 1 plasmids harboring a single transcription unit. Up to five transcription units can be assembled into a level 2 plasmid.  </figcaption>
 
    </figure>
 
 
An additional layer of flexibility in the construction of LVL2 plasmids is added to our toolbox by our 5’- and 3’- Connectors which flank the transcription units in LVL1 plasmids. These connectors provide the fusion sites for the assembly of LVL2 plasmids. By selecting the correct connectors, the user can define the order as well as the orientation of each transcription unit. The ability to assign an orientation to a transcription unit is supposed to reduce the influence of neighboring unit on each other caused by transcriptional read through and DNA supercoiling. Moreover, our connectors are designed to function as genetic insulators. They consist of 300 bp “neutral DNA” flanked by strong transcriptional terminators to separate each transcription unit in a LVL2 plasmid. We believe that this novel feature is an important step towards building genetic constructs in a rational and predictable manner.<br>
 
 
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<h3> Construction of novel part entry vectors </h3>
 
All LVL0 parts have to be stored in plasmids to allow for amplification and long term storage. To create new LVL0 parts, a PCR product or annealed oligos are cloned into a part entry vector. This vector harbours the resistance and ori that are required for selection and propagation. Furthermore, part entry vectors can be designed in a way that they contain a dropout. This dropout can be a transcription unit for a marker that generates a visible output. The first golden-gate-based toolbox MoClo (Weber <i>et al. </i>2011) used a LacZ alpha transcription unit which can be used for blue white screening in many E. coli cloning strains. This concept was also adapted by iGEMs PhytoBrick system.  During the cloning of LVL0 parts, this dropout is replaced by the desired part. When the cloning reaction is transformed into a suitable E. coli strain and the cells are plated on agar plates with supplemented IPTG and X-Gal. Colonies transformed with the religated entry plasmid appear blue while white colonies most probably contain the correctly assembled plasmid. The LVL0 part entry vector in iGEMs PhytoBrick system (BBa_P10500) has been designed as described and can be used for blue white screening.<br>
 
We appreciate the approach of using part entry plasmids with dropouts but, for two reasons, we think that LacZ is not an optimal reporter. First, blue white screening requires the two expensive chemicals IPTG and X-Gal which have to be added to the agar plates. Second, blue white screening is restricted to <i>E.coli </i>strains with an incomplete lac operon that is complemented by the LacZ alpha fragment that is expressed from the plasmid (Langley <i>et al.</i> 1975). Consequently blue white screening is not compatible with a <i>V. natriegens </i>wild type strain (Link zu Improvement Page).<br>
 
 
<figure style="width: 40%; float: right">
 
        <img class="flexAssets" src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2018/8/85/T--Marburg---K2560002.png">
 
 
        <figcaption><b> Figure 2: Plasmid map of K2560002 </b> <br> This part enables creation of new LVL0 parts by replacing the parts sequence with the desired insert. The sfGFP expression cassette is flanked by BsmBI recognition sites </figcaption>
 
    </figure>
 
 
We overcame both drawbacks by replacing the LacZ alpha dropout of BBa_P10500 by a RFP and sfGFP dropout and thus created the two parts BBa_K2560001 and BBa_K2560002, respectively. Like BBa_P10500, our two new dropout parts are located in a derivative of pSB1C3 which is extended with two BsaI recognition sites. The dropout parts are flanked by BsmBI recognition sites that are required for replacing the dropout by the desired LVL0 part. The resulting LVL0 parts are classified as PhytoBricks and are RFC10 and RFC25 compatible, assuming that the part itself does not contain prohibited recognition sites. The resulting plasmids can be used to clone and store all LVL0 parts. However, for resistance parts a different approach enables more convenient LVL1 cloning. In the LVL1 golden-gate-reaction, at least eight parts are combined in a single tube together with the required enzymes. All parts, except the resistance part, are stored in the previously described pSB1C3 derivate which confers a chloramphenicol resistance. Obviously, the plasmid that provides the new resistance cassette for the LVL1 plasmid (e.g. a Cas9 plasmid with kanamycin resistance), has to contain the same resistance cassette (kanamyicin in this example). Because cloning is never 100 % efficient, re-ligation of LVL0 plasmids is a common event, and in case of the LVL0 resistance part, results in false positive colonies which do not contain the desired LVL1 plasmid.<br>
 
We developed a solution for this problem by creating the novel resistance entry vectors BBa_K2560005 and BBa_K2560006. These plasmids contain a RFP and sfGFP dropout, respectively, and a chloramphenicol resistance cassette that is flanked by BsaI and BsmBI recognition sites. When a new LVL0 resistance part is cloned, the chloramphenicol resistance is replaced by the new antibiotic resistance marker resulting in a RFP or sfGFP expressing plasmid with the respective resistance marker. When using these LVL0 parts for LVL1 cloning, the re-ligated resistance parts yield colonies with a visually detectable phenotype. As a result, correct plasmids can be easily identified, even for inefficient LVL1 clonings with < 10 % efficiency.<br>
 
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<h3>Choice of fusion sites for LVL1 cloning</h3>
 
Golden-gate based cloning relies upon the use of type IIs restriction endonucleases like BsaI, BsmBI or BpiI. In comparison to the commonly used type II restriction enzymes (e.g. EcoRI or PstI) they also recognize a specific DNA sequence but cleave outside of their recognition sequence (Pingoud and Jeltsch 2001). The golden-gate-cloning method is taking advantage of this property. A single enzyme can be used to create various single-stranded overhangs that match in a predefined order and finally lead to the correctly assembled plasmid (Engler et al. </i>2008).<br>
 
When we started to design the Marburg Collection, we carefully investigated which fusion sites should be used. The fusion sites do not only set the order in which the single parts will be assembled but also affect the assembly efficiency and determine if a newly designed toolbox is compatible with already existing collections, so that parts can be shared easily. For us, the most important and decisive argument was that we wanted to be compatible with as many other toolboxes as possible. It is our strong belief that scientists all over the world should agree on one set of fusion sites to ensure complete interchangeability between different toolboxes. The toolboxes of MoClo (Weber<i> et al.</i> 2011), Loop Assembly (Pollak<i> et al.</i> 2018) and the PhytoBrick system already use a common set of fusion sites. We decided to adapt these fusion sites for all parts that build the transcription unit (Promoter, RBS, CDS, Terminator, Tags). Fusion sites for parts that are novel to our system (Connectors, Oris, Resistance cassettes) had to be newly designed by us because these parts did not exist in the other toolboxes. <br><br>
 
 
 
We applied the following design principles to obtain optimal fusion sites. Firstly, the newly designed fusion sites must neither be identical to already existing fusion sites nor be palindromic to prevent assembly in a wrong order. Secondly, the fusion sites should not consist of bases that represent a portion of the recognition sequence of a restriction enzyme. If, for example, a fusion site with the sequence GGTC was used, and the sequence of the downstream part starts with TC, a BsaI recognition site would be reconstituted. So all fusion sites that would result in a partial recognition sequence of either BsaI, BsmBI or any of the enzymes that are used in the Biobrick cloning, are excluded. Lastly, the remaining candidates were sorted according to their GC content and the fusion sites with the highest GC content were chosen.<br>
 
To make design of new parts as simple as possible, we created a collection of overhangs that can be copied from table xxxx and pasted to the sequence specific part of a primer to create new LVL0 parts. These primers contain the cut sites for integration into the part entry vector as well as the predefined fusion sites that are required for correctly assembling LVL1 plasmids. In some cases these overhangs contain additional bases that will be discussed in the following chapter.
 
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    <div class="btn_expand">View table with primer overhangs</div>
 
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<figure>
 
 
<table>
 
    <tr>
 
      <th>Part Category</th>
 
      <th>Fwd Overhang</th>
 
      <th>Rev Overhang</th>
 
    </tr>
 
    <tr>
 
      <td>1 <br>5’ Connector</td>
 
      <td>AA<b><u>GGTCTC</b></u>GCTCG<b>AACA</b><u>CGTCTC</u>G<b><i>NNNN</b></i></td>
 
      <td><b>GGAG</b>TGAGG<b><u>GAGACC</b></u>AA</td>
 
 
    </tr>
 
    <tr>
 
      <td>2 <br>Promoter</td>
 
      <td>AA<u>CGTCTC</u>GCTCG<b>GGAG</b></td>
 
      <td><b>TACTT</b>GAGG<u>GAGACG</u>AA</td>
 
 
    </tr>
 
    <tr>
 
      <td>3 <br>RBS</td>
 
      <td>AA<u>CGTCTC</u>GCTCG<b>TACT</b>AGAG</td>
 
      <td>TAATC<b>AATGT</b>GAGG<u>GAGACG</u>AA</td>
 
    </tr>
 
                <tr>
 
      <td>4 <br>CDS</td>
 
      <td>AA<u>CGTCTC</u>GCTCG<b>AATG</b></td>
 
      <td><b>GCTT</b>TGAGG<u>GAGACG</u>AA</td>
 
    </tr>
 
                <tr>
 
      <td>5 <br>Terminator</td>
 
      <td>AA<u>CGTCTC</u>GCTCG<b>GCTT</b>AA</td>
 
      <td><b>CGCT</b>TGAGG<u>GAGACG</u>AA</td>
 
    </tr>
 
                <tr>
 
      <td>6 <br>3’ Connector</td>
 
      <td>AA<u><b>GGTCTC</u></b>GCTCG<b>CGCT</b></td>
 
      <td><b><i>NNNN</b></i>G<u>GAGACG</u><b>AGCT</b>TGAGG<u><b>GAGACC</u></b>AA</td>
 
   
 
                </tr><tr>
 
                        <td>7 <br>Ori</td>
 
      <td>AA<u>CGTCTC</u>GCTCG<b>AGCT</b></td>
 
      <td><b>TGCT</b>TGAGG<u>GAGACG</u>AA</td>
 
    </tr></tr><tr>
 
                        <td>8 <br>Resistance</td>
 
      <td>AA<u>CGTCTC</u>GCTCGT<b>GCTT</b></td>
 
      <td><b>AACA</b>TGAGG<u>GAGACG</u>AA</td>
 
    </tr>
 
                <tr><tr>
 
                        <td>4x<br> N-Tag</td>
 
      <td>AA<u>CGTCTC</u>GCTCG<b>AATG</b></td>
 
      <td>GG<b>GATG</b>TGAGG<u>GAGACG</u>AA</td>
 
    </tr>
 
                </tr><tr>
 
                        <td>4y<br>N-tagged CDS</td>
 
      <td>AA<u>CGTCTC</u>GCTCG<b>GATG</b></td>
 
      <td><b>GCTT</b>TGAGG<u>GAGACG</u>AA</td>
 
    </tr>
 
                </tr><tr>
 
                        <td>5a <br>C-Tag</td>
 
        <td>AA<u>CGTCTC</u>GCTCG<b>GCTT</b>TA</td>
 
      <td>G<b>GGTA</b>TGAGG<u>GAGACG</u>AA</td>
 
    </tr>
 
                </tr><tr>
 
                        <td>5b<br> Terminator</td>
 
        <td>AA<u>CGTCTC</u>GCTCGGGTAA</td>
 
      <td><b>CGCT</b>TGAGG<u>GAGACG</u>AA</td>
 
    </tr>
 
  </table>
 
 
      <figcaption><b>Table 1:</b> Primer overhangs for creating new LVL0 parts. Overhangs have to be added to the 5’ end of the primer. Reverse overhangs have to be added as reverse complement. Underlined bases represent BsmBI recognition sites. Bolt bases indicate fusion sites for LVL1 assembly. Bold and underlined bases show BsaI recognition sites. N bases written in bold and italic show fusion sites for lvl1 assembly and have to be custom-designed. </figcaption>
 
  </figure>
 
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<h3>Additional bases between parts</h3>
 
The fusion sites of most golden-gate-based cloning methods create a four base pair scar that is referred to as the fusion site. The fusion sites are the feature that makes toolboxes compatible with each other. Between some parts, additional bases are required for different reasons. These bases were chosen carefully to achieve best performance of the respective part. Please note that these additional bases are not a strict requirement to use or being compatible with our toolbox but we recommend them for the design of additional parts.<br>
 
The first additional bases were incorporated between the Promoter and RBS part. The fusion site is TACT and AGAG was added additionally. The sequence between promoter and RBS that results by using our suggested overhangs form the same scar that is created if the the parts were assembled with 3A Assembly (Knight 2003). This means that the distance between promoter and RBS is not changed and therefore we do not expect negative effects in transcription or translation. Moreover, we hope that creating the same scar with a different method will make our experimental data more comparable to the data acquired with plasmids assembled with 3A Assembly in previous iGEM projects.
 
The next bases were integrated between RBS and CDS parts. The fusion site, which was adapted from the PhytoBrick system, AATG and TAATC was added upstream of it. Previous work has shown that the sequence between a RBS and the start codon dramatically affects the expression of the desired protein (Lentini<i> et al. </i>2013). A spacer length of six base pairs was shown to result in the strongest expression. When comparing different bases in a six bp spacer, the experimental data indicate significant differences. The 3A Assembly scar results in 50 % expression strength compared to the sequence TAATCT which was referred to as the reference (Lentini <i>et al. </i>2013). We chose to use the spacer sequence which is expected to result in highest expression as we think that a system that is designed to enable strongest expression can be easily adapted for low expression by using weak RBS or promoters while going to the opposite direction might be more difficult. Unfortunately, we could not adapt the exact “reference sequence” because the first A in the fusion site AATG is already part of the spacer. Eventually, we used the first five bases of the strongest spacer (Lentini <i>et al.</i> 2013) upstream of the fusion site. <br>
 
Close attention has to be paid to fusion sites that connect two sequences which are translated like the CDS part or N- and C- terminal Tags. A fusion site in our system consists of four bases which would result in disrupting the triplet code. To prevent mistranslated proteins, two additional bases have to be added to create a six bp scar that results in two translated amino acids. These can be seen as linkers between the joined CDS parts or tags. We decided to preferably use amino acids that are abundant in natural or synthetic flexible linkers like glycine and serine (Chen <i>et al.</i> 2012). Flexible linkers have been shown to improve the performance of epitope tags in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Sabourin<i> et al.</i> 2007). Therefore we added the bases GG upstream of the fusion site between 4x (N-Tag) and 4y (CDS) which results in glycine and methionine (methionine is preset by the fusion site) and the bases TA downstream of the fusion site between 4 (CDS) and 5a (C-Tag) resulting in an  alanine and leucine linker. To allow for the optional use of C-terminal tags, a CDS part must not possess a stop codon. Therefore an additional linker has to be introduced between 4 (CDS) and 5 (Terminator) as well as between 5a (C-Tag) and 5b (Terminator) resulting in an alanine-STOP and glycine-STOP, respectively. <br> 
 
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<figure style="width: 70%; float: center">
 
        <img class="flexAssets" src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2018/3/30/T--Marburg--Fusionsites.png">
 
 
        <figcaption><b> Figure 3: Additional bases and fusion sites ensure correct spacing and allow tags </b><br>
 
Between some parts, additional base pairs were integrated to ensure correct spacing and to maintain the triplet code. We expanded our toolbox by providing N- and C- terminal tags by creating novel fusions and splitting the CDS and terminator part, respectively.  </figcaption>
 
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<h3>Design of Connectors</h3>
 
One key feature of the Marburg Collection are the connectors that provide our toolbox with the required flexibility. Our design is inspired by the “Dueber Toolbox”, a golden-gate-based cloning method designed for applications in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Lee <i>et al.</i> 2015). To our knowledge, the “Dueber Toolbox” is the first cloning system that performs assembly through all levels using restriction sites located on independent basic parts, termed connectors, instead of destination plasmids for level 1 and level 2 plasmids (Weber <i>et al. </i>2011). Using connectors instead of destination plasmids enables the user to freely choose antibiotic resistance parts and oris. To achieve the flexibility to choose one out of four resistances and one out of three oris, like it is possible in our toolbox, twelve plasmids would be required for building LVL1 plasmids. For building LVL2 plasmids, LVL1 plasmids with different fusion sites are needed. In our system, this is also achieved through the connectors in contrast to the destination plasmids which are used in other cloning methods. In already existing toolboxes, the combinatorics that come with choosing oris and resistances would be multiplied by the number of required positional vectors which provide the fusion sites for LVL2 assembly. A toolbox with five possible positions, four resistances and three oris would require 60 LVL1 destination plasmids. To enable inversion of transcription units, a built-in feature in our toolbox, the previous number would be multiplied by two, resulting in 120 required LVL1 destination plasmids. <br>
 
Unsurprisingly, this theoretical toolbox would not be convenient to be built and used. The Marburg Collection presents a novel approach that achieves maximum flexibility with a minimum of required components. We provide two sets of connectors. The first set, the “short connectors” solely provide the fusion sites for subsequent assembly. The fusion sites are identical to the ones that are used in building LVL1 plasmids to avoid having to design a complete new set of fusion sites. This also enables using LVL0 ori and resistance parts in LVL2 plasmids. Inversion of individual transcription units was also achieved by designing fusion sites that match in reverse order. The 5’ and 3’ connectors can be chosen independently to build a LVL1 plasmid. This allows the user to combine any number of LVL1 plasmids between one and five into a LVL2 plasmid without end linkers that are required in other toolboxes (Andreou and Nakayama, 2018). In addition to the “short connectors”, we designed a set of “long connectors” that function as genetic insulators. They fulfill the same basic functions as the short connectors, providing fusion sites for subsequent cloning. Additionally, they consist of 300 bp “neutral DNA” flanked by two strong transcriptional terminators. The purpose of these long connectors is to reducing cross interaction between neighbouring transcription units, mainly transcriptional read through, a phenomenon that was described previously (Mairhofer <i>et al.</i> 2015).
 
The design of “neutral DNA” started with generating 300 bp of random DNA which do not possess recognition sites of BsaI, BsmBI and any of the enzymes used in Biobrick Assembly, using a self-made Matlab script. These sequences were analyzed with the reverse mode of the R2oDNA designer (Casini <i>et al.</i> 2014). The R2oDNA designer can take a DNA sequence as input and quantifies the extent of secondary structures, repeats and forbidden sequence motifs, such as promoter or RBS motifs. Because the genome sequence of V. natriegens is not included in the tool, a BLAST search was performed manually with the sequences to check for homologies with the genome of V. natriegens. The top hit was considered as a fourth score to quantify the quality of a spacer sequence. At the end of this process, four scores were assigned to every sequence, each describing a different characteristic. We decided that spacer sequences with decent scores in each category are better suited as insulators than sequences with a superior score in one and inferior scores in other categories. <br>
 
We developed a Matlab script to find the “best” spacer sequences by increasing quantiles and picking spacers that fall into the lowest quantiles for all four categories. For example, the best sequence was found to be among the best 28 % of all tested sequences in terms of secondary structure, repeats, forbidden motifs and homology to the genome of V. natriegens.  The selected sequences were flanked by synthetic transcriptional terminators that were developed in the lab of Christopher A. Voigt (Chen<i> et al.</i> 2013). Most terminators were described to be unidirectional (Chen <i>et al.</i> 2013) and therefore the orientation of the flanking terminators had to be considered. Our priority was to prevent transcription into the respective transcription unit from the upstream sequence. Therefore each spacer sequence was equipped with a strong terminator at the 3’ and 5’ end of the 5’ connector in forward and reverse orientation, respectively. <br>
 
We expect to achieve the best reduction of crosstalk between neighbouring transcription units by combining our insulators in combination with connectors that facilitate inversion of an individual transcription unit, thus providing a large step towards the reliable and predictable design of synthetic circuits.
 
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<h3>Selection of parts</h3>
 
 
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In addition to the connectors that form the scaffold of our toolbox, we evaluated which parts should be integrated into the Marburg Collection. As a starting point, we focused on parts that are already commonly used in <i>E. coli</i> to demonstrate their compatibility with our new chassis <i>V. natriegens</i>. Therefore we integrated all 20 promoters of the Anderson Library, four RBS from the Community Collection and the most frequently used reporters and terminators. We also included two well established inducible promoters, three widely used oris and the four resistance parts covering the antibiotics used by iGEM. <br>
 
In addition to this standard set of parts, our toolbox provides N- and C-terminal fluorescence and epitope tags to facilitate fluorescence microscopy and protein purification and degradation tags that can be used to finetune protein levels. Lastly, we submitted all project related parts that can be used to perform genome engineering via CRISPR/Cas9 or natural competence and all enzymes that were used in our metabolic engineering project.  <br>
 
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    <div class="btn_expand">Summary of the features of the Marburg Collection</div>
 
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<h3>Summary of the features of the Marburg Collection</h3>
 
The Marburg Collection is designed to be the most flexible golden-gate-based toolbox for prokaryotes. The high degree of flexibility of our toolbox is achieved by the de novo construction of plasmids instead of using entry vectors like most other toolboxes. A novel core feature are the connectors that provide the fusion sites for subsequent cloning steps and can be used to set the order and orientation of each individual transcription unit. A set of newly designed insulators, consisting of “neutral DNA”, and two transcriptional terminators, are designed to minimize crosstalk between neighbouring transcription units.
 
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Revision as of 11:13, 15 October 2018

Description

Genetic toolboxes, a review

Golden Gate Assembly is a revolutionary cloning method published 10 years ago (Engler et al., 2008). since its publication it became very popular giving rise to many assembly strategies based on this system. All systems published over the years offered improvements over previous publications. Nevertheless, although there are many systems available – often specialized for certain organisms or classes – the development by far is not at an end. We worked on a novel toolbox and developed an improved, highly flexible system focused on prokaryotes including a high number of parts characterized for the novel upcoming chassis V. natriegens.

The innovation given by Golden Gate assembly was the introduction of type IIS restriction enzymes used for DNA digestion. A current workflow at that time consisted of DNA restriction, gel purification and finally ligation of the single parts. For restriction different type II restriction enzymes were taken making it important to check for compatible buffers and getting a six base pair scar after ligation. By introducing type IIS restriction enzymes into this workflow the system was highly improved. This new method offered many advantages like I) an independent enzyme recognition site that is removed after restriction, II) restriction and ligation in one pot III) directional assembly by conscious design of the cleavage sequences IV) no buffer incompatibilities due to the usage of one enzyme cutting at several spots and still producing different cleavage sequences (Engler et al., 2008) (Figure will be added…).
Based on this, many new systems arose offering the possibility of building complex constructs out of single genetic parts in a fast, simple and flexible way. Full libraries of standardized genetic parts were developed enabling the user to build full combinatorial libraries. The first system developed was the modular cloning system (MoClo) offering a new hierarchical cloning method of defined biological parts (Weber et al., 2011) and consequently setting a new standard over the years.
Here we summarize some Golden Gate based systems and compare their advantages and disadvantages.

Figure 1: Golden Gate assembly
Image description
Modular Cloning (MoClo)

The modular cloning system was the first one proposing a standard for Golden Gate based assembly. This toolbox offers 5 types of modules designed mainly for eukaryotes. The modules are stored in level 0 acceptor plasmids derived from the pUC19 backbone with a spectinomycin resistance and a LacZα cassette as dropout for blue/white screening. Custom level 0 plasmids are assembled by flanking the sequences with BpiI recognition sites and setting a single restriction-ligation-reaction with the correspondent plasmid. Up to 5 level 0 modules are assembled in an acceptor plasmid with ampicillin resistance and a LacZα-dropout by restriction with BsaI to transcription units. 6 transcription units can be assembled using BpiI into level 2 multigene constructs containing a kanamycin resistance and a Cred-dropout. Alternatively Esp3I can be use to transfer the constructs to intermediary levels to reach higher levels for assembly of bigger constructs.

Part Collection

Strain Engineering
Metabolic engineering
Our vision of Accelerating Metabolic Engineering

Our Goal

Our goal is to accelerate metabolic engineering by establishing a workflow for fast pathway construction, product screening and pathway optimization. Metabolic engineering is a broad field in synthetic biology, where existing pathways are divided into modular parts and then used and combined to build new pathways ( (Stephanopoulos et al.2012) ). One of the best examples for the impact of metabolic engineering on solving global problems is the engineered production pathway for artemisinic acid, the precursor for a drug against malaria (Ro et al.2006) . In the old days the drug had to be isolated out of the plant Artemisia annua. This was very inefficient because of the limitations of plant growth and low yields of artemisinic acid. Therefore, the group of Jay Keasling engineered a metabolic pathway to produce the drug in yeast cells, which grow faster and produce a lot more artemisinic acid. As in this example, metabolic engineering enables the production of drugs and other valuable products with an increased yield when compared to product isolation from natural sources. Furthermore, the large variety of usable enzymes, pathways and chassis enables more flexibility in pathway design compared to chemical approaches.

Why should we accelerate metabolic engineering?

Although much progress in metabolic engineering was made in the last 20 years, there are still many drawbacks and limitations. For instance, it is crucial to have a big set of genes as combinable parts to find the optimal pathway and they have to be predictable. With many of them just poorly characterized, rational pathway design remains difficult. Our understanding of the working and interactions of enzymes at the level of the metabolism is still rudimentary. Consequently, metabolic engineering consists of much trial-and-error and researchers have to endure series of failures. One strategy to face these issues is modeling of enzyme behavior but currently limitations in computing power prevent this from being used in high-throughput. Another strategy is to use chassis as workhorses to test a lot of enzyme combinations and pathway variants. Here, organisms like E. coli, S. cerevisiae or C. glutamicum are often used but product formation is limited by growth rate and nutrient uptake (Stephanopoulos et al.2007). When a pathway is constructed and to be tested, one has to wait until the production strain has grown and then product formation is still limited by substrate uptake. Another big drawback is that screening for product often is expensive, time consuming and complicated. Conventional methods like LC-MS need a lot of time and resources and it is hardly possible to use it in high-throughput, for instance for a whole pathway library. To overcome these limitations and accelerate metabolic engineering, we established V. natriegens as chassis for metabolic engineering. Its doubling time of under 10 minutes makes it the perfect organism to quickly test many pathway variants or enzyme versions. Additionally, it has a glucose uptake rate of 3.90 g g-1h-1 while E. coli, S. cerevisiae and C. glutamicum have much lower rates (1.90, 3.52 and 0.37 g g-1h-1, respectively). Coupled with the short doubling time, V. natriegens is a powerful chassis not only for research purposes but also for industrial usage, where high productivity is crucial.

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Figure 1: Metabolic Workflow established by iGEM Team Marburg 2018

How are we accelerating metabolic engineering?

For optimal execution of metabolic engineering we established a workflow, basing on the DBTL-cycle. We use our Marburg Toolbox to build whole pathway libraries, which can then be transformed into our producer strain VibriXpress. By using biosensors for product screening, we circumvent the expensive and time-intensive usage of LC-MS and learn which pathway variants are the most promising. These findings can then be fed into our pathway-design, thereby closing the DBTL-cycle. To further optimize these pathways, we planned to use directed evolution for more adaptations to that route.

Production of 3-hydroxypropionic acid

3-Hydroxypropionic acid 3HPA

As a proof of concept for our engineering workflow we chose the biological production of 3-Hydroxypropionic acid ( 3HPA ). 3HPA is a compound of high industrial value. In 2004 the U.S. Department of Energy recommended 3HPA as alternative to fossil oils for the r chemical industry (Werpy et al.2004). 3HPA as a platform chemical can be converted into many other compounds like acrylic acid and acrylamide, which both are also precursors for further compounds. According to an estimate of 2014, acrylates alone have an annual market value of USD12 billion, making its precursor 3HPA an optimal target product for our metabolic engineering approach. By finding the optimal pathway to produce 3HPA we could show the efficiency of metabolic engineering in V. natriegens as well as getting a big step closer to an alternative to fossil oils by biological, renewable resources. [Abbildung: T--Marburg--Metabolic_Applications.svg --- noch nicht fertig!]

Our pathway

In recent years many people concentrated on producing 3HPA via many different metabolic pathways (Valdehuesa et al.2013) ; (Vidra et al.2017). Most of these pathways use glycerol or glucose as starting substrate, but there are also publications where acrylic acid, CO2 or uracil were converted to 3HPA (Vidra et al.2017). One promising route starts with glycerol which is dehydrated and oxidized. For E. coli, a productivity of 6.6 mmol g-1 cdw h-1 (oder Lieber andere units? 6.5mmol l-1 oder 0.48 mol mol-1 glycerol) has been shown (Raj et al.2008). However, this route depends on vitamin B12, which often can’t be taken up or produced by the chassis. Many other routes start with glucose, which gets metabolized via propionate, lactate, β-alanine or malonyl-CoA (Vidra et al.2017). We decided to use a pathway, based on the conversion of acetyl-CoA into malonyl-CoA and finally 3HPA . According to (Valdehuesa et al.2013) who evaluated many pyruvate-derived production pathways from a thermodynamic point of view, this is one of the most efficient routes for 3HPA production. This pathway was first established in E. coli, but it was also tried in many other chassis like S. cerevisiae and S. elongatus (Kildegaard et al.2016); (Liu et al.2017); (Rathnasingh et al.2012). We chose this route for several reasons. Firstly, it is based on glucose degradation and V. natriegens has an unbeaten glucose-uptake rate, enabling high glucose consumption. Secondly, vitamin B12 is not necessary, the only cofactors involved are NADPH and biotin, both of which occur naturally in the organism. Thirdly, theoretically just one further enzyme is needed to complete the pathway. All enzymes necessary for the production of malonyl-CoA are already present in V. natriegens and we just have to integrate the last enzyme, malonyl-CoA reductase. Nevertheless, overexpression of acetyl-CoA carboxylase increases production, so we took both enzymes into consideration. (Liu et al.2017) proposed, that there are many ways to further optimize the pathway and direct the flow towards a high product titer. Hence, implementing many variations of this pathway into V. natriegens and testing them in a fast manner promises a wealth of knowledge about pathway optimization and general principles of metabolic engineering.

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Figure 2: Pathway we have chosen for our metabolic engineering efforts.
https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2018/thumb/0/0d/T--Marburg--Pathway.svg/1024px-T--Marburg--Pathway.svg.png The first relevant enzyme in the pathway is the acetyl-CoA carboxylase (Acc) that catalyzes the carboxylation of acetyl-CoA. It is involved in fatty acid biosynthesis,consisting of four subunits in E. coli, a biotin-carboxylase (BC), a biotin-carboxyl-carrier-protein domain (BCCP) and two carboxyltransferase subunits (CT) (Jansen et al.2004). During catalysis, a biotin molecule is first linked to a lysine residue in the BCCP domain. Via ATP-hydrolysis the BC domain carboxylates the biotin, which then induces a conformational change and brings the carboxy-group into close proximity of the CT domain. Finally, the CT domain transfers the carboxy-group to the acetyl-CoA, leading to the formation of malonyl-CoA (Lee et al.2008) The subunits are organized in four genes in E. coli (Rathnasingh et al.2012) , however, in other organisms like C. glutamicum the genes are located in two operons (Gande et al.2007).
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Figure 3: Mechanism of ACC
The second relevant enzyme in the pathway is the malonyl-CoA reductase (Mcr), which is involved in CO2 fixation by the 3-hydroxypropionate bicycle in thermophilic bacteria (Alber et al.2002). It is a 132kDa large, bifunctional enzyme with alcohol dehydrogenase and aldehyde dehydrogenase function. The C-terminal domain catalyzes the NADPH-dependent reduction of malonyl-CoA into 3-oxopropanoic acid, while the N-terminal domain catalyzes consecutive reduction of 3-oxopropanoic acid to 3-hydroxypropionate (Liu et al.2013).

Vibrio natriegens, a review

When we first started research about V. natriegens, we only came across the latest publications, as well as the original descriptions. Only very tentatively, we became aware of the full body of research that had accumulated since its discovery. In order to make it easier for the scientific community to become familiar with V. natriegens, we thoroughly collected all available publications about it. You can find the complete list of publications on our wiki. The following text is meant to give a first impression about what is known and what has been done so far regarding V. natriegens.

Introduction

First isolated from salt marsh mud on Sapelo island off the coast of Georgia in 1958 (Payne et al. 1958), the gram-negative bacterium was first named Pseudomonas natriegens (Payne et al. 1960). These early studies also revealed a broad range of tolerated pH conditions with an optimum at a pH of 7.5 (Payne et al. 1960). One feature of this newly discovered organism became immediately apparent: The incredible doubling rate, first determined to be around 9.8 minutes (Eagon 1962). We found that doubling rates of around 7 minutes were possible (own Data).

Only much later, studies found several possible reasons for this. Firstly, as most Vibrio species, V. natriegens genome is split and distributed on two chromosomes. This means that replication can start at two origins of replication (Ori), resulting in more in parallel replication.

Additionally, it was shown that the gamma-proteobacterium has an increased rRNA activity. This is because of a greater number of rRNA operons which are additionally controlled by stronger promoters (Aiyar et al. 2002) when compared to E. coli . More rRNA means more ribosomes since rRNA synthesis has been shown to be the rate-limiting step in their assembly (Miura et al. 1981). Estimates for the number of ribosomes in V. natriegens in the exponential phase suggest around 115,000 per cell, while E. coli is estimated to have between 70,000 and 90,000 (Failmezger et al. 2018).

This gives V. natriegens higher protein expression and lets it create biomass more quickly. Could this also be exploited for the production of high-value proteins? Most likely.

It was soon discovered that V. natriegens would make a perfect example by which to effectively and harmlessly demonstrate the basic techniques of microbiology to students, taking full advantage of the immense doubling rate (Mullenger 1973; Delpech 2001). Experiments regarding population structure, UV stress, and simply bare growth can be observed in a much shorter timeframe.

V. natriegens has a single stage lifecycle and does not form spores. The rod shaped bacterium does however possess a single polar flagella (Austin et al. 1978).

Ecology
V. natriegens has some amazing abilities. By understanding them as adaptations, it becomes quite apparent that V. natriegens is itself first and foremost a product of its environment. Therefore, getting a better understanding of its ecology helps explain some of these capabilities.

The rod-shaped bacterium occupies a special ecological nice in estuarine and salt marsh regions, where strongly fluctuating salt concentrations and nutrient availability create a challenging environment. In order to adapt to these challenges, V. natriegens can utilize a wide range of substrates to outgrow competitors, as well as remain in a low metabolic state for extended periods of time when the nutrient pool is depleted (Nazly 1980). Furthermore, it has the ability to quickly draw available phosphorous from its environs and store them in polyphosphate bodies (Nissen et al. 1987) for later utilization. Yet another way in which V. natriegens is adapted to its variable environment is the storage of carbon as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), biodegradable polyesters that are accumulated in intracellular granules that can be broken down under starvation conditions (Chien et al. 2007).

From the well oxygenated upper layer of mud down to the anoxic layers, V. natriegens is able to grow in many surroundings. These extremes are challenges to which V. natriegens found solutions. At the surface of the mud, as well as in open waters, the bacteria are exposed to strong UV radiation. As a response to this, the DNA damage repair systems are highly active (Simons et al. 2010), with significantly elevated expression levels of some parts of the system compared to E. coli , thus increasing DNA sequence integrity. By switching to fermentation, growth can be maintained under anaerobic conditions, allowing the colonization of the lower strata in the mud.

V. natriegens was shown to be a vital part of the marine ecosystem because it has the rare ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen under anaerobic conditions, thereby enriching its habitat and playing a crucial role as a provider of essential, bioavailable nitrogen (Coyer et al. 1996) under anaerobic conditions.

Unsurprisingly, V. natriegens has its own predators in its native habitat: Bacteriophages (Zachary 1974). Studies in the 70ies found a link between different phages and the prevailing environmental conditions (Zachary 1978) . This suggests the phages employ a divide and conquer strategy, specializing, thereby limiting competition while improving reproductive success. One phage may have adapted to be effective at lower temperatures, while others prefer higher temperatures. The same applies to other conditions like for instance salt concentration (Zachary 1976). Intriguingly, that opens the possibility of creating genetic parts derived from these phages, applicable to future work with V. natriegens, analogous to the T7 system in E. coli. On the other hand, one study could show, that the phage carrying the toxins associated with V. cholerae could not replicate in V. natriegens (Lee et al. 2016), further showing its harmlessness towards humans.

In contrast to that, some strains of Vibrio natriegens seem to be predators themselves. Confirmed as being pathogenic in several marine crustacea, most notably in the swimming crab Portunus trituberculatus, in which V. natriegens can lead to mortalities up to 85% (Bi et al. 2016). This is especially problematic since P. trituberculatus is farmed commercially in aquaculture in south-east China. The mechanism of that infection is poorly studied and it is not clear whether all strains of V. natriegens are pathogenic to crustaceans, but it is well known that many Vibrio species cause opportunistic infections in crustacea.

On a more positive note, a recent study could show that the sponge Aplysilla rosea develops a more diverse microbiome when exposed to V. natriegens (Mehbub et al. 2018). It can be speculated that this helps to protect the sponge from pathogenic microbes that then find it harder to colonize its surface.

Metabolism

A diverse, well-balanced metabolism allows a bacterium to grow in many conditions, while simultaneously making it interesting for biotechnological applications. V. natriegens can utilize a wide range of substrates (Hoffart et al. 2017), as well as grow in the absence of oxygen while being faster than other bacteria under the same conditions.

For many applications in which a modern laboratory work horse is expected to be useful, a high-resolution map of its metabolism is a prerequisite. One recent study generated just that (Long et al. 2017). By tracking 13C labeled carbon through the intricate network that constitutes V. natriegens metabolism, they were able to gain insight. Fore one, they found the it to be very similar to the well-studied E. coli metabolism. It has al the mayor catabolic and anabolic pathways, the same canonical amino acids and building blocks. Some notable differences between the two were the RNA content being 29% in V. natriegens compared to only 21% in E. coli, the presence of an enzyme for the decarboxylation of oxalate (Long et al 2017).

The specific uptake of many carbon sources per gram dry weight per time was sown to be significantly higher than in other comparable species of bacteria (Hoffart et al. 2017). Many commercially interesting compounds are already produced by unmodified V. natriegens. In the case of alanine production, only four deletions resulted in a strain that outperformed highly specialized E. coli and C. glutamicum production-strains by a factor of 9 to 13 times (Hoffart et al. 2017). Bioreactor based production on a large scale is expensive, therefore a strain generating similar or even higher yield per gram carbon source is highly desirable, improving temporal yield per fermentation unit.

When growing anaerobically, acids are produced that lead to an acidification of the medium but when grown under strong aeration, the pH can, depending on the medium, rise. This is most likely due to formation of ammonia (Eagon 1962).

The dependence on Na+ ions for its metabolic activity conveys a form of natural biocontainment, inhibiting growth in accidentally released V. natriegens (Webb and Payne 1971). The high salt content of the LBv2 media also presents possible contaminants with a barrier, reducing the likelihood of airborne microbes to take hold.

Recently, a study revealed that V. natriegens, surprisingly, is the most effective producer of selenium nanoparticles yet described (Fern`ndez-Llamosas et al. 2017). These particles with a diameter from 100-400nm have applications in diverse fields, such as medicine, microelectronics and more. Producing the nanoparticles in living systems has benefits over other methods, for instance, the low energy consumption as well as a coat of proteins preventing agglomeration of the particles. Also, V. natriegens exceptionally high resistance to selenite suggests possible applications in bioremediation of contaminated water and soils.

Working with V. natriegens

ATCC 14048 is the most commonly used strain of V. natriegens. Most results from earlier studies were generated from this strain. We recommend using ATCC 14048 in order to ensure that the findings will be applicable to your work and to adopt it as the standard strain. It is also the fastest strain known (Weinstock et al. 2016) so you won´t miss out on its incredible doubling time.

Stemming from subtropical regions, V. natriegens has not the same tolerance to low temperatures that we are used to from E. coli, but it is still much more resilient to cold than B. subtilis. At the root of that lies the low catalytic activity of V. natriegens native catalase at low temperatures, which is then unable to detoxify reactive oxygen species. To address that problem, scientists from SGI introduced homologous catalases, thereby creating a strain with comparable cold tolerance. With this adaptation, storage on plates can now be extended beyond the four weeks at room temperature by placing the plates in the fridge (Weinstock et al. 2016) In storage at -80°C in a standard 20% glycerol stock the cells stay viable almost indefinitely. And even when working with the wildtype, your cells won´t die overnight when placed at 4°C. Only after a week they will notably start decreasing in viability.

When working with V. natriegens ATCC 14048, no special precautions have to be taken since it has been shown that no known pathogenicity associated genes were present (Weinstock et al. 2016) Also, there is continued record of research since 1958 with not a single documented incident of a human infection with V. natriegens.

Molecular Biology
Accessing, altering and understanding the genetics of an organism has become commonplace since sequencing and methods for genetic engineering have become affordable and readily available. Making these tools available for V. natriegens is, therefore, paramount making it an attractive chassis.

Lately, a new branch of microbiologists developed an interest in V. natriegens. Their main focus lies in establishing state of the art methods and bringing V. natriegens to its full potential. We see our project as part of this movement and wish to make V. natriegens easily accessible to researchers. One groundbreaking paper (Weinstock et al. 2016) established several methods to make V. natriegens genetically accessible, as well as characterizing some central genetic parts. This paved the way for more research into applying its potential.

If you want to introduce genetic material into V. natriegens, you have several tried and tested options to choose from. You could use electroporation, a quick and simple method and the one with the highest transformation efficiency. Electroporation can also be used on wildtype cells. Or you could use chemically competent cells, the transformation works very similar to E. coli heat shock transformation. But in order to achieve good efficiencies using chemically competent cells, a nuclease deletion strain is needed. And if you want to insert especially large constructs, you can also use conjugation with very good success ( (Lee et al. 2016; Weinstock et al. 2016).

A fully sequenced genome is also a prerequisite for many studies. Currently, several sequences are available (Lee et al. 2016; Maida et al. 2013), one of them generated by us. The genome has a size of approximately 5.17 Mb. Automated annotation was performed, revealing more of the genomic structure, as well as enabling the reconstruction of the codon usage profile (Lee et al. 2016).

The genome of V. natriegens is, like in many species of the genus, split into two chromosomes. Chromosome one contains 3.24 Mb, chromosome two 1.92 Mb.

Plasmids, Promoter, resistance

Usually, a big hurdle when changing your chassis organism is a very basic question: Will my constructs still work? Do I need different ori? Do I have to redesign everything from scratch? Fortunately, the most commonly used origins of replication, ColE1, p15A and pMB1 are maintained just fine in V. natriegens (Weinstock et al. 2016) We could observe some differences in copy number, which we quantified. You can find the corresponding data on our Part collection page. To retrieve these plasmids from the cells, we have tested a wide variety of commercially available kits and found that all of them worked, returning plasmid of the same purity and yield as for E. coli. Promoter commonly used in E. coli also lead to expression in V. natriegens. Expression levels are slightly different, but we also quantified these and you can find the results on our toolbox page. The same goes for other basic genomic parts like terminators and ribosomal binding sites.

Commonly, when very high gene expression is needed, for instance in protein overproduction, the phage derived T7 system is used. The T7 phage infects E. coli but it was also successfully inserted into V. natriegens and shown to drive protein expression (Weinstock et al. 2016) One way of generating even stronger, phage derived promoters could be using V. natriegens derived phage expression systems.

Every organism has its unique set of resistances to certain antimicrobial molecules. In order to successfully use a new organism, awareness of its individual tolerances is required to use antibiotics successfully for selection. We could show that chloramphenicol, carbenicillin, tetracycline and kanamycin worked, but at different concentrations from E. coli. We measured the V. natriegens specific concentrations and made them available on our strain engineering page.

Plasmids in absence of a selective pressure were only retained for a short time (Own Data). Curing of plasmids that have no longer a purpose is therefore quick and fairly effortless.

MuGENT - Recombineering

Investigations into alternative genetic tools were also undertaken, most notably MuGENT and Recombineering.

MuGENT takes advantage of V. natriegens natural competence by inducing the TfoX system. The TfoX system, which is known from many Vibrio species, enables uptake and genomic integration of DNA parts via homologous recombination (Pollack-Berti 2010). In most cases, growth on chitin was identified as the trigger which activated the system. Regrettably, the trigger is not known for V. natriegens. Using this system, a group of researchers characterized this system in V. natriegens, making it usable by placing it under the control of an inducible promoter. Additionally, they demonstrated its potential by increasing the natural poly-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) production 100-fold (Dalia et al. 2017).

Recombineering takes advantage of the fact that short DNA oligonucleotides, that can easily be delivered into cells by a plethora of ways, can be used to generate point mutations, knockouts and small modifications in the genome, as well as on plasmids. The homologous flanks required are relatively short, allowing for constructs under 100 bp. Having this system available in V. natriegens means that generating new strains and gene variants is easy and quickly implemented (Lee et al. 2017).

Cell Free Protein-expression Systems (CFPS)

Very recently, several groups have published their work about cell free protein expression systems (CFPS) in V. natriegens (Failmezger et al. 2018; Des Soye et al. 2018; Wiegand et al. 2018). Cell free systems offer the advantage of direct access to many cell components as well as fine control over the conditions in the reaction (Carlson et al. 2012). While these are true for all CFPSs, the advantage of creating such a system from V. natriegens is the much higher ribosome count (Failmezger et al. 2018).

Although the system works well when expressing plasmids from E. coli, it could be shown that expression was much higher when plasmids prepared from V. natriegens were used. Possible explanations are differences in methylation patterns, resulting in degradation of the plasmid by the system (Failmezger et al. 2018). All this could be done by using protocols very similar to well established methods for other bacteria.

Cre- lox

The Cre- lox system was also successfully implemented and shown to work consistently with 600bp homology flanks (Weinstock et al. 2016) Recycling of selection markers, like antibiotic resistances, as well as the removal of incorporated genes becomes easy and reliable.

Also interesting for future protein related applications is, that a putative secretion signal was identified (Weinstock et al. 2016)

Fun facts:

The epithet natriegens was chosen after the realization that salt is needed for it to grow, natrie stemming from the Latin word natrium meaning sodium and the Latin verb egere, meaning to need.

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