Just passing through: Deploying aquaporins in microbial cell factories.

As microbial membranes are naturally impermeable to even the smallest biomolecules, transporter proteins are physiologically essential for normal cell functioning. This makes transporters a key target area for engineering enhanced cell factories. As part of the wider cellular transportome, aquaporins (AQPs) are responsible for transporting small polar solutes, encompassing many compounds which are of great interest for industrial biotechnology, including cell feedstocks, numerous commercially relevant polyols and even weak organic acids.

Discovery of novel cellobiose lipid gene clusters from Basidiomycetes: How chemical variation is reflected in gene cluster architecture.

Cellobiose lipids are surface-active compounds or biological detergents produced by distinct Basidiomycetes yeasts, of which the most and best-described ones belong to the Ustilaginomycetes class. The molecules display slight variation in congener type, which is linked to the hydroxylation position of the long fatty acid, acetylation profile of the cellobiose unit, and presence or absence of the short fatty acid. In general, this variation is strain specific.