William E. Michener

Implications of cellobiohydrolase glycosylation for use in biomass conversion

The cellulase producing ascomycete, Trichoderma reesei (Hypocrea jecorina), is known to secrete a range of enzymes important for ethanol production from lignocellulosic biomass. It is also widely used for the commercial scale production of industrial enzymes because of its ability to produce high titers of heterologous proteins. During the secretion process, a number of post-translational events can occur, however, that impact protein function and stability. Another ascomycete, Aspergillus niger var. awamori, is also known to produce large quantities of heterologous proteins for industry. In this study, T. reesei Cel7A, a cellobiohydrolase, was expressed in A. niger var. awamori and subjected to detailed biophysical characterization. The purified recombinant enzyme contains six times the amount of N-linked glycan than the enzyme purified from a commercial T. reesei enzyme preparation. The activities of the two enzyme forms were compared using bacterial (microcrystalline) and phosphoric acid swollen (amorphous) cellulose as substrates. This comparison suggested that the increased level of N-glycosylation of the recombinant Cel7A (rCel7A) resulted in reduced activity and increased non-productive binding on cellulose. When treated with the N-glycosidase PNGaseF, the molecular weight of the recombinant enzyme approached that of the commercial enzyme and the activity on cellulose was improved.

A new method for the rapid determination of volatile organic compound breakthrough times for a sorbent at concentrations relevant to indoor air quality.

Abstract The use of sorbents has been proposed to remove volatile organic compounds (VOCs) present in ambient air at concentrations in the parts-per-billion (ppb) range, which is typical of indoor air quality applications. Sorbent materials, such as granular activated carbon and molecular sieves, are used to remove VOCs from gas streams in industrial applications, where VOC concentrations are typically in the parts-per-million range. A method for evaluating the VOC removal performance of sorbent materials using toluene concentrations in the ppb range is described. Breakthrough times for toluene at concentrations from 2 to 7500 ppb are presented for a hydrophobic molecular sieve at 25% relative humidity. By increasing the ratio of challenge gas flow rate to the mass of the sorbent bed and decreasing both the mass of sorbent in the bed and the sorbent particle size, this method reduces the required experimental times by a factor of up to several hundred compared with the proposed American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers method, ASHRAE 145P, making sorbent performance evaluation for ppb-range VOC removal more convenient. The method can be applied to screen sorbent materials for application in the removal of VOCs from indoor air.

Renewable acrylonitrile production

A sweet source to make acrylonitrile Much of the attention directed toward displacing petroleum feedstocks with biomass has focused on fuels. However, there are also numerous opportunities in commodity chemical production. One such candidate is acrylonitrile, a precursor to a wide variety of plastics and fibers that is currently derived from propylene. Karp et al. efficiently manufactured this compound from an ester (ethyl 3-hydroxypropanoate) that can be sourced renewably from sugars. The process relies on inexpensive titania as a catalyst and avoids the side production of cyanide that accompanies propylene oxidation. Science, this issue p. 1307 Titania catalyzes efficient production of a commodity chemical using an ester sourced from sugars. Acrylonitrile (ACN) is a petroleum-derived compound used in resins, polymers, acrylics, and carbon fiber. We present a process for renewable ACN production using 3-hydroxypropionic acid (3-HP), which can be produced microbially from sugars. The process achieves ACN molar yields exceeding 90% from ethyl 3-hydroxypropanoate (ethyl 3-HP) via dehydration and nitrilation with ammonia over an inexpensive titanium dioxide solid acid catalyst. We further describe an integrated process modeled at scale that is based on this chemistry and achieves near-quantitative ACN yields (98 ± 2%) from ethyl acrylate. This endothermic approach eliminates runaway reaction hazards and achieves higher yields than the standard propylene ammoxidation process. Avoidance of hydrogen cyanide as a by-product also improves process safety and mitigates product handling requirements.

Thermochemical wastewater valorization via enhanced microbial toxicity tolerance

Thermochemical (TC) biomass conversion processes such as pyrolysis and liquefaction generate considerable amounts of wastewater, which often contains highly toxic compounds that are incredibly challenging to convert via standard wastewater treatment approaches such as anaerobic digestion. These streams represent a cost for TC biorefineries, and a potential valorization opportunity, if effective conversion methods are developed. The primary challenge hindering microbial conversion of TC wastewater is toxicity. In this study, we employ a robust bacterium, Pseudomonas putida, with TC wastewater streams to demonstrate that aldehydes are the most inhibitory compounds in these streams. Proteomics, transcriptomics, and fluorescence-based immunoassays of P. putida grown in a representative wastewater stream indicate that stress results from protein damage, which we hypothesize is a primary toxicity mechanism. Constitutive overexpression of the chaperone genes, groEL, groES, and clpB, in a genome-reduced P. putida strain improves the tolerance towards multiple TC wastewater samples up to 200-fold. Moreover, the concentration ranges of TC wastewater are industrially relevant for further bioprocess development for all wastewater streams examined here, representing different TC process configurations. Furthermore, we demonstrate proof-of-concept polyhydroxyalkanoate production from the usable carbon in an exemplary TC wastewater stream. Overall, this study demonstrates that protein quality control machinery and repair mechanisms can enable substantial gains in microbial tolerance to highly toxic substrates, including heterogeneous waste streams. When coupled to other metabolic engineering advances such as expanded substrate utilization and enhanced product accumulation, this study generally enables new strategies for biological conversion of highly-toxic, organic-rich wastewater via engineered aerobic monocultures or designer consortia.

The catalytic mechanism and unique low pH optimum of Caldicellulosiruptor bescii family 3 pectate lyase

The unique active site of the Caldicellulosiruptor bescii family 3 pectate lyase (PL3) enzyme has been thoroughly characterized using a series of point mutations, X-ray crystallography, pK(a) calculations and biochemical assays. The X-ray structures of seven PL3 active-site mutants, five of them in complex with intact trigalacturonic acid, were solved and characterized structurally, biochemically and computationally. The results confirmed that Lys108 is the catalytic base, but there is no clear candidate for the catalytic acid. However, the reaction mechanism can also be explained by an antiperiplanar trans-elimination reaction, in which Lys108 abstracts a proton from the C5 atom without the help of simultaneous proton donation by an acidic residue. An acidified water molecule completes the anti β-elimination reaction by protonating the O4 atom of the substrate. Both the C5 hydrogen and C4 hydroxyl groups of the substrate must be orientated in axial configurations, as for galacturonic acid, for this to be possible. The wild-type C. bescii PL3 displays a pH optimum that is lower than that of Bacillus subtilis PL1 according to activity measurements, indicating that C. bescii PL3 has acquired a lower pH optimum by utilizing lysine instead of arginine as the catalytic base, as well as by lowering the pK(a) of the catalytic base in a unique active-site environment.

In situ recovery of bio-based carboxylic acids

The economics of chemical and biological processes is often dominated by the expense of downstream product separations from dilute product streams. Continuous separation techniques, such as in situ product recovery (ISPR), are attractive in that they can concentrate products from a reactor and minimize solvent loss, thereby increasing purity and sustainability of the process. In bioprocesses, ISPR can have an additional advantage of increasing productivity by alleviating product inhibition on the microorganism. In this work, we developed a liquid–liquid extraction (LLE)-based ISPR system integrated with downstream distillation to selectively purify free carboxylic acids, which were selected as exemplary bioproducts due to their ability to be produced at industrially relevant titers and productivities. Equilibrium constants for the extraction of carboxylic acids into a phosphine-oxide based organic phase were experimentally determined. Complete recovery of acids from the extractant and recyclability of the organic phase were demonstrated through multiple extraction–distillation cycles. Using these data, an equilibrium model was developed to predict the acid loading in the organic phase as a function of the extraction equilibrium constant, initial aqueous acid concentration, pH, organic to aqueous volume ratio, and temperature. A distillation process model was then used to predict the energy input required to distill neat acid from an organic phase as a function of the acid loading in the organic phase feed. The heat integrated distillation train can achieve neat recovery of acetic acid with an energy input of 2.6 MJ kg−1 of acetic acid. This LLE-based ISPR system integrated with downstream distillation has an estimated carbon footprint of less than 0.36 kg CO2 per kg of acetic acid, and provides a green approach to enable both new industrial bioprocesses, and process intensification of existing industrial operations by (1) increasing the productivity and titer of the bioprocess via decreasing end-product inhibition, (2) minimizing downstream separation energy input to less than 20% of the heating value of the product, and (3) generating no waste products.

Engineering cellulolytic bacterium Clostridium thermocellum to co-ferment cellulose- and hemicellulose-derived sugars simultaneously

Cellulose and hemicellulose are the most abundant components in plant biomass. A preferred Consolidated Bioprocessing (CBP) system is one which can directly convert both cellulose and hemicellulose into target products without adding the costly hydrolytic enzyme cocktail. In this work, the thermophilic, cellulolytic, and anaerobic bacterium, Clostridium thermocellum DSM 1313, was engineered to grow on xylose in addition to cellulose. Both xylA (encoding for xylose isomerase) and xylB (encoding for xylulokinase) genes from the thermophilic anaerobic bacterium Thermoanaerobacter ethanolicus were introduced to enable xylose utilization while still retaining its inherent ability to grow on 6‐carbon substrates. Targeted integration of xylAB into C. thermocellum genome realized simultaneous fermentation of xylose with glucose, with cellobiose (glucose dimer), and with cellulose, respectively, without carbon catabolite repression. We also showed that the respective H2 and ethanol production were twice as much when both xylose and cellulose were consumed simultaneously than when consuming cellulose alone. Moreover, the engineered xylose consumer can also utilize xylo‐oligomers (with degree of polymerization of 2–7) in the presence of xylose. Isotopic tracer studies also revealed that the engineered xylose catabolism contributed to the production of ethanol from xylan which is a model hemicellulose in mixed sugar fermentation, demonstrating immense potential of this enhanced CBP strain in co‐utilizing both cellulose and hemicellulose for the production of fuels and chemicals.

Engineering Pseudomonas putida KT2440 for efficient ethylene glycol utilization

Ethylene glycol is used as a raw material in the production of polyethylene terephthalate, in antifreeze, as a gas hydrate inhibitor in pipelines, and for many other industrial applications. It is metabolized by aerobic microbial processes via the highly toxic intermediates glycolaldehyde and glycolate through C2 metabolic pathways. Pseudomonas putida KT2440, which has been engineered for environmental remediation applications given its high toxicity tolerance and broad substrate specificity, is not able to efficiently metabolize ethylene glycol, despite harboring putative genes for this purpose. To further expand the metabolic portfolio of P. putida, we elucidated the metabolic pathway to enable ethylene glycol via systematic overexpression of glyoxylate carboligase (gcl) in combination with other genes. Quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction demonstrated that all of the four genes in genomic proximity to gcl (hyi, glxR, ttuD, and pykF) are transcribed as an operon. Where the expression of only two genes (gcl and glxR) resulted in growth in ethylene glycol, improved growth and ethylene glycol utilization were observed when the entire gcl operon was expressed. Both glycolaldehyde and glyoxal inhibit growth in concentrations of ethylene glycol above 50 mM. To overcome this bottleneck, the additional overexpression of the glycolate oxidase (glcDEF) operon removes the glycolate bottleneck and minimizes the production of these toxic intermediates, permitting growth in up to 2 M (~124 g/L) and complete consumption of 0.5 M (31 g/L) ethylene glycol in shake flask experiments. In addition, the engineered strain enables conversion of ethylene glycol to medium-chain-length polyhydroxyalkanoates (mcl-PHAs). Overall, this study provides a robust P. putida KT2440 strain for ethylene glycol consumption, which will serve as a foundational strain for further biocatalyst development for applications in the remediation of waste polyester plastics and biomass-derived wastewater streams.