The commercial production of chemicals using pathway engineering.

Integration of metabolic pathway engineering and fermentation production technologies is necessary for the successful commercial production of chemicals. The 'toolbox' to do pathway engineering is ever expanding to enable mining of biodiversity, to maximize productivity, enhance carbon efficiency, improve product purity, expand product lines, and broaden markets. Functional genomics, proteomics, fluxomics, and physiomics are complementary to pathway engineering, and their successful applications are bound to multiply product turnover per cell, channel carbon efficiently, shrink the size of factories (i.

Identification of the acid/base catalyst in Agrobacterium faecalis beta-glucosidase by kinetic analysis of mutants.

The catalytic mechanism of the retaining beta-glucosidase (Abg) from Agrobacterium faecalis involves a double-displacement process in which an alpha-glucosyl-enzyme intermediate is formed with general acid catalytic assistance and then hydrolyzed with general base assistance. Glu170 was identified as an important residue, possibly the acid/base catalyst, on the basis of sequence alignments. This glutamate is conserved in almost all enzymes in family 1 of glycoside hydrolases.

Substrate-induced inactivation of a crippled beta-glucosidase mutant: identification of the labeled amino acid and mutagenic analysis of its role.

The beta-glucosidase from Agrobacterium sp. catalyzes the hydrolysis of beta-glucosides via a covalent alpha-D-glucopyranosyl-enzyme intermediate involving Glu358. Hydrolysis of 2,4-dinitrophenyl beta-D-glucopyranoside by the low activity Glu358Asp mutant of Agrobacterium beta-glucosidase is accompanied by time-dependent inactivation of the enzyme.

The pTugA and pTugAS vectors for high-level expression of cloned genes in Escherichia coli.

Plasmids pTugA and pTugAS, designed for expression of cloned genes in Escherichia coli, possess the features of high-level inducible transcription, enhanced RNA translation, portability, high copy number, stability and versatility. In addition, pTugAS can be used to produce fusion proteins comprising a target protein and a cellulose-binding domain. Such fusion proteins can be purified in a single step by affinity chromatography on cellulose.

Analysis of a novel gene and beta-galactosidase isozyme from a psychrotrophic Arthrobacter isolate.

We have characterized a new psychrotrophic Arthrobacter isolate which produces beta-galactosidase isozymes. When DNA from this isolate was transformed into an Escherichia coli host, we obtained three different fragments, designated 12, 14, and 15, each encoding a different beta-galactosidase isozyme. The beta-galactosidase produced from fragment 12 was of special interest because the protein subunit was smaller (about 71 versus 116 kDa) than those typically encoded by the lacZ family.