Publications by authors named "Andrei Zimin"

Genome editing tools based on SpCas9 and FnCpf1 have facilitated strain improvements for natural product production and novel drug discovery in . However, due to high toxicity, their editing requires high DNA transformation efficiency, which is unavailable in most streptomycetes. The transformation efficiency of an all-in-one editing tool based on miniature Cas nuclease AsCas12f1 was significantly higher than those of SpCas9 and FnCpf1 in tested streptomycetes, which is due to its small size and weak DNA cleavage activity.

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Diseases due to infections by pathogenic Escherichia coli strains are on the rise and with the growing antimicrobial resistance among bacterial pathogens, including this group. Thus, alternative therapeutic options are actively investigated. Among these alternatives is phage therapy.

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Streptomycetes have a strong ability to produce a vast array of bioactive natural products (NPs) widely used in agriculture and veterinary/human medicine. The recently developed CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing tools have greatly facilitated strain improvement for target NP overproduction as well as novel NP discovery in . However, CRISPR/Cas9 shows high toxicity to the host, limiting its application in many strains with a low DNA transformation efficiency.

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Unlabelled: DNA glycosylases are DNA repair enzymes capable of removing damaged nitrogenous bases, including those formed as a result of UV irradiation with sunlight (approximately 300-400 нм). DNA glycosylases are common not only among bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes, but some groups of viruses can also encode them. The best-known viral glycosylase is endonuclease V (DenV, Pdg-T4) of Escherichia virus T4, the main substrate of which is cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers.

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Rapamycin is an important macrocyclic antibiotic produced by Streptomyces rapamycinicus. In the rapamycin biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC), there are up to five regulatory genes, which have been shown to play important roles in the regulation of rapamycin biosynthesis. Here, we demonstrated that the rapamycin BGC-situated LAL family regulator RapH co-ordinately regulated the biosynthesis of both rapamycin and elaiophylin.

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The viruses are some of the most common viruses on Earth. Representatives of this subfamily have long been used in the molecular biology studies as model organisms - since the emergence of the discipline. are promising agents for phage therapy in animals and humans, since their representatives have only lytic life cycle and many of their host bacteria are pathogens.

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CRISPR/Cas-mediated genome editing has greatly facilitated the study of gene function in Streptomyces. However, it could not be efficiently employed in streptomycetes with low homologous recombination (HR) ability. Here, a deaminase-assisted base editor dCas9-CDA-UL was developed in Streptomyces, which comprises the nuclease-deficient Cas9 (dCas9), the cytidine deaminase from Petromyzon marinus (PmCDA1), the uracil DNA glycosylase inhibitor (UGI) and the protein degradation tag (LVA tag).

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The hypothesis of hot volcanic organic stream as the most probable and geologically plausible environment for abiogenic polycondensation is proposed. The primary synthesis of organic compounds is considered as result of an explosive volcanic (perhaps, meteorite-induced) eruption. The eruption was accompanied by a shock wave propagating in the primeval atmosphere and resulting in the formation of hot cloud of simple organic compounds-aldehydes, alcohols, amines, amino alcohols, nitriles, and amino acids-products, which are usually obtained under the artificial conditions in the spark-discharge experiments.

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Identification and cloning of genes as well as biochemical characterization of the gene products were carried out for two novel endolysins of pseudo T-even lytic bacteriophages RB43 and RB49, which represent different myovirus groups of the subfamily . Genes RB43ORF159c and RB49р102 were cloned in cells, and their products were purified to electrophoretic homogeneity with an up to 80 % yield of total activity. In respect to substrate specificity, both enzymes were found to be lytic l-alanoyl-d-glutamate peptidases belonging to the M15 family.

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The hypothesis of direct coding, assuming the direct contact of pairs of coding molecules with amino acid side chains in hollow unit cells (cellules) of a regular crystal-structure mineral is proposed. The coding nucleobase-containing molecules in each cellule (named "lithocodon") partially shield each other; the remaining free space determines the stereochemical character of the filling side chain. Apatite-group minerals are considered as the most preferable for this type of coding (named "lithocoding").

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Although bacteriophage T5 is known to have lytic proteins for cell wall hydrolysis and phage progeny escape, their activities are still unknown. This is the first report on the cloning, expression and biochemical characterization of a bacteriophage T5 lytic hydrolase. The endolysin-encoding lys gene of virulent coliphage T5 was cloned in Escherichia coli cells, and an electrophoretically homogeneous product of this gene was obtained with a high yield (78% of total activity).

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The nucleotide sequence corresponding to 13-19.5% of the bacteriophage T5 genome in early region C was determined (GenBank AY 140897). One of the five major single-stranded interruptions (nicks) of bacteriophage T5 DNA was identified at 18.

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