Purification of biomevalonate from fermentation broth and conversion of biomevalonate into biomevalonolactone.

Mevalonate (MVA) is a key compound of living organisms including bacteria, plants, and humans. MVA and mevalonolactone (MVL), a lactonized form of MVA, are important for pharmaceutical, cosmeceutical, and biotechnological applications. Although (R, S)-MVA with 50% enantiomeric purity is mainly produced by chemical synthesis, recently, microbial fermentation processes for MVA production have been considered as an alternative to the chemical synthesis because of high enantiomeric purity [(R)-MVA] and high titer.

Incorporation of Unnatural Amino Acids in Response to the AGG Codon.

The biological protein synthesis system has been engineered to incorporate unnatural amino acid into proteins, and this has opened up new routes for engineering proteins with novel compositions. While such systems have been successfully applied in research, there remains a need to develop new approaches with respect to the wider application of unnatural amino acids. In this study, we reported a strategy for incorporating unnatural amino acids into proteins by reassigning one of the Arg sense codons, the AGG codon.

The astaxanthin dideoxyglycoside biosynthesis pathway in Sphingomonas sp. PB304.

A major carotenoid in Sphingomonas sp. PB304, originally isolated from a river in Daejon City, South Korea, was identified as astaxanthin dideoxyglycoside. Gene clusters encoding the astaxanthin dideoxyglycoside biosynthetic enzymes were identified by screening Sphingomonas sp.