Publications by authors named "Mingzhu Ding"

Resource utilization of food waste is necessary to reduce environmental pollution. However, antibiotics can enter the environment through food waste, resulting in antibiotic residues, which pose potential risks to human health. In this study, commensal artificial consortia were constructed through intercellular adaptation to simultaneously degrade antibiotics and bioconvert food waste into lipopeptides.

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Microbial degradation of petroleum hydrocarbons plays a vital role in mitigating petroleum contamination and heavy oil extraction. In this study, a capable of degrading hexadecane has been successfully engineered, achieving a maximum degradation rate of up to 20.42%.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study focuses on improving the production of iturin A, a valuable antifungal compound, by genetic modifications in the wild-type strain HM618.
  • Deleting the endogenous plasmid plas1 and inactivating certain Rap phosphatase-related genes significantly increased iturin A synthesis while balancing cell growth.
  • The engineered strain HM-DR13 achieved a remarkable output of 849.9 mg/L of iturin A in just 48 hours, highlighting the potential of this new approach for optimizing production.
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Although fengycin exhibits broad-spectrum antifungal properties, its application is hindered due to its low biosynthesis level and the co-existence of iturin A and surfactin in Bacillus amyloliquefaciens HM618, a probiotic strain. In this study, transcriptome analysis and gene editing were used to explore the potential mechanisms regulating fengycin production in B. amyloliquefaciens.

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There has been extensive research on the biological recycling of PET waste to address the issue of plastic waste pollution, with ethylene glycol (EG) being one of the main components recovered from this process. Therefore, finding ways to convert PET monomer EG into high-value products is crucial for effective PET waste recycling. In this study, we successfully engineered to utilize EG and produce glycolic acid (GA), expecting to facilitate the biological recycling of PET waste.

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High-salt content in food waste (FW) affects its resource utilization during biotransformation. In this study, adaptive laboratory evolution (ALE), gene editing, and artificial consortia were performed out to improve the salt-tolerance of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens for producing lipopeptide under FW and seawater. High-salt stress significantly decreased lipopeptide production in the B.

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Article Synopsis
  • Fengycin shows promise for biological control due to its safety and ability to break down in the environment.
  • Researchers engineered strains to boost the production of key amino acid precursors, enhancing fengycin biosynthesis significantly.
  • In bioreactor tests, the microbial consortium produced fengycin at high levels (3290 mg·L), demonstrating its effective antifungal properties, which could be utilized as a food preservative.
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Fengycin possesses antifungal activity but has limited application due to its low yields. Amino acid precursors play a crucial role in fengycin synthesis. Herein, the overexpression of alanine, isoleucine, and threonine transporter-related genes in Bacillus subtilis increased fengycin production by 34.

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Petroleum hydrocarbons are relatively recalcitrant compounds, and as contaminants, they are one of the most serious environmental problems. n-Alkanes are important constituents of petroleum hydrocarbons. Advances in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering strategies have made n-alkane biodegradation more designable and maneuverable for solving environmental pollution problems.

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Environmental sustainability is an increasingly important issue in industry. As an environmentally friendly and sustainable way, constructing microbial cell factories to produce all kinds of valuable products has attracted more and more attention. In the process of constructing microbial cell factories, systems biology plays a crucial role.

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Increasingly complex synthetic environmental pollutants are prompting further research into bioremediation, which is one of the most economical and safest means of environmental restoration. From the current research, using microbial consortia to degrade complex compounds is more advantageous compared to using isolated bacteria, as the former is more adaptable and stable within the growth environment and can provide a suitable catalytic environment for each enzyme required by the biodegradation pathway. With the development of synthetic biology and gene-editing tools, artificial microbial consortia systems can be designed to be more efficient, stable, and robust, and they can be used to produce high-value-added products with their strong degradation ability.

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Fengycin is a lipopeptide with broad-spectrum antifungal activity. However, its low yield limits its commercial application. Therefore, we iteratively edited multiple target genes associated with fengycin synthesis by combinatorial metabolic engineering.

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Polyolefins, including polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP) and polystyrene (PS), are widely used plastics in our daily life. The excessive use of plastics and improper handling methods cause considerable pollution in the environment, as well as waste of energy. The biodegradation of polyolefins seems to be an environmentally friendly and low-energy consumption method for plastics degradation.

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Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is a widely used plastic that is polymerized by terephthalic acid (TPA) and ethylene glycol (EG). In recent years, PET biodegradation and bioconversion have become important in solving environmental plastic pollution. More and more PET hydrolases have been discovered and modified, which mainly act on and degrade the ester bond of PET.

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Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) biodegradation is regarded as an environmentally friendly degradation method. In this study, an artificial microbial consortium composed of , and two metabolically engineered was constructed to degrade PET. First, a two-species microbial consortium was constructed with two engineered that could secrete PET hydrolase (PETase) and monohydroxyethyl terephthalate hydrolase (MHETase), respectively; it could degrade 13.

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Article Synopsis
  • The development of synthetic microbial consortia is a key area in synthetic biology, utilizing systems biology to enhance design and functionality.
  • A study on the production of 2-keto-l-gulonic acid (2-KLG) demonstrated the effectiveness of a consortium involving an engineered strain (VTC2) and a helper strain, which collectively improved production rates significantly.
  • The findings highlighted the role of up-regulated genes related to metabolic processes and oxidative stress management, resulting in a 1.49-fold increase in 2-KLG production, showcasing the potential for optimizing microbial collaborations for biotechnological applications.
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Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) preferentially infects and causes Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) in male patients. However, the biological mechanisms are largely unknown. This study was novel in confirming the extensive nuclear distribution of the androgen receptor (AR) and its co-localization with viral oncoprotein of latency-associated nuclear antigen in KS lesions, indicating a transcription way of AR in KS pathogenesis.

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Article Synopsis
  • Petroleum hydrocarbon pollutants are tough to break down, but bioremediation, which uses microbes, is gaining popularity as a solution.
  • The review discusses how microbes adapt to and transport hydrocarbons, along with recent discoveries of strains, genes, and pathways involved in breaking down these pollutants.
  • Advances in genetic and metabolic engineering, along with synthetic biology, can enhance the efficiency of hydrocarbon-degrading microbes and optimize bioremediation efforts.
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Vitamin C (VC) is comprehensively applied in foods, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and especially clinical medicine. Nowadays, the industrial production of VC mainly relies on the classic two-step fermentation route, and researchers have explored the way for one-step fermentation of VC in recent years. In this study, a VC biosynthesis pathway that directly produced VC from glucose was reconstructed in , and the protein engineering and metabolic engineering strategies were adopted to improve it.

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Crocetin, an important natural carotenoid dicarboxylic acid with high pharmaceutical values, has been successfully generated from glucose by engineered in our previous study. Here, a systematic optimization was executed for crocetin overproduction in yeast. The effects of precursor enhancement on crocetin production were investigated by blocking the genes involved in glyoxylate cycle [citric acid synthase () and malic acid synthase ()].

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Carotenoids, a variety of natural products, have significant pharmaceutical and commercial potential. Phytoene dehydrogenase (CrtI) is the rate-limit enzyme for carotenoid synthesis, whose catalysis specificity results in various carotenoids. However, the structural characteristics of CrtI for controlling the catalysis specificity on dehydrogenation steps are still unclear, which limited the development of CrtI function.

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Plant glycosides are of great interest for industries. Glycosylation of plant secondary metabolites can greatly improve their solubility, biological activity, or stability. This allows some plant glycosides to be used as food additives, cosmetic products, health products, antisepsis and anti-cancer drugs.

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In a one-step fermentation system of vitamin C production with Gluconobacter oxydans and Ketogulonicigenium vulgare, a functional module of α-lipoic acid biosynthesis was constructed in G. oxydans. The engineered G.

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Objectives: A three-species consortium for one-step fermentation of 2-keto-L-gulonic acid (2-KGA) was constructed to better strengthen the cell-cell communication. And the programmed cell death module based on the LuxI/LuxR quorum-sensing (QS) system was established in Gluconobacter oxydans to reduce the competition that between G. oxydans and Ketogulonicigenium vulgare.

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Background: Strains with increased alkali tolerance have a broad application in industrial, especially for bioremediation, biodegradation, biocontrol and production of bio-based chemicals. A novel synthetic chromosome recombination and modification by LoxP-mediated evolution (SCRaMbLE) system has been introduced in the synthetic yeast genome (Sc 2.0), which enables generation of a yeast library with massive structural variations and potentially drives phenotypic evolution.

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