Solvent Tolerance in Bacteria: Fulfilling the Promise of the Biotech Era?

The challenge of sustainably producing highly valuable chemical compounds requires specialized microbial cell factories because many of these compounds can be toxic to microbial hosts. Therefore, solvent-tolerant bacteria are promising production hosts because of their intrinsic tolerance towards these compounds. Recent studies have helped to elucidate the molecular mechanisms involved in solvent tolerance.

Complete genome sequence of solvent-tolerant Pseudomonas putida S12 including megaplasmid pTTS12.

Pseudomonas putida S12 is a solvent-tolerant gamma-proteobacterium with an extensive track record for production of industrially relevant chemicals. Here we report the annotated complete genome sequence of this organism, including the megaplasmid pTTS12 which encodes many of the unique features of the S12 strain.