Directed Evolution of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Lipase A Petroleum has long been a precious resource throughout history. Petroleum was likely used to construct asphalt that made the great towers and walls of Babylon (Leung, 1989). China used it to extract precious salt from seawater (Lerner, Wu, & Lin, 1964). Today, the world faces the challenge of creating enough fuel to satisfy the demands of a petroleum-dependent world. With the pressures of supply and demand ever increasing, industries around the globe have sought alternative measures to create this precious substance. One of the most promising methods in obtaining hydrocarbon-based fuels has been found in synthetic biology with the use of microorganisms, as they readily grow, divide, …show more content…
This technique takes prior knowledge of the enzyme’s primary amino acid sequence. An array of specific primers have variations in their sequence, such that a precise region of amino acids can be changed to all 20 amino acids present on the codon chart. The famous experiment using this technique took place in 2005 when researchers modified residues of a hormone receptor to bind a variety of ligands (Zaks & Klibanov, 1984). Researchers subsequently realized the importance of changing specific amino acids and extended this technique to site directed mutagenesis, a technique which involves only point mutations to the DNA sequence to yield changed amino acid residues at specific locations. Background information of PAL Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a gram-negative bacterium that can pose as a pathogen for plants and animals. This pathogen has been characterized and proven to produce a secreted lipase that could be used for a number of industrial applications. Lipases are chosen for industrial purposes largely due to their production of chemicals that can be used in pharmaceuticals, biofuels, or other products (Nakagawa, Hasegawa, Hiratake, & Sakata, 2007). Additionally, these enzymes display a lack of generality in terms of substrate binding. In other words, lipases can bind a variety of substrates, making them valuable for many applications. They also have been reported to function in both aqueous and
Unlike many environmental bacteria, Pseudomonas aeruginosa has a remarkable capacity to cause disease in susceptible hosts. It has the ability to adapt to and thrive in many ecological niches, from water and soil to plant and animal tissues. The bacterium is capable of utilizing a wide range of organic compounds as food sources, thus giving it an exceptional ability to
Escherichia Coli, or E. Coli, can also form a number of these substances itself with the use of energy. (Shiloach and Rinas, 2009b) Understanding that it can make these substances with energy, E. Coli can reproduce asexually to make identical cells through binary fission. (Souza, Castillo, and Eguiarte, 2002. )
Petroleum is a thick and flammable mixture of gaseous, liquid and solid hydrocarbons that occurs naturally beneath the earth’s surface. It can be separated into fractions including natural gas fuels, lubricating oils and so on. There are some major oil producing regions around the globe. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia’s crude oil fields are the largest. But in Texas, the former world’s major oil region is now almost completely dry. The real catalyst for petroleum production is World War I. It is being produced in large amount during the war. Petroleum is a commercial product in this modern era. Sometimes, petroleum and crude oil are used to mean the same thing, or in other words, petroleum products after crude oil is refined in a factory. There are
In the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the natural oil eating bacteria were able to curb the spreading of the oil in certain areas. Furthermore, the bacteria consumed “at least 200,000 tons of oil and natural gas that spewed into the Gulf [of Mexico] following the BP Deepwater Horizon spill”(LiveScience 1). The bacteria’s removal of 200,000 tons of oil proved incredibly effective since human efforts would have been much more costly and inefficient. These microorganisms convert the oil into fuel with nitrogen acquired from the air. Although high levels of this beneficial organism may lead to competition with other bacteria, a moderate amount with human supervision would create a natural solution to oil spills. As hefty environmental fines are placed on large oil companies such as BP and Exxon Mobile, the Environmental Protection Agency’s fund increases in large jolts, in most oil spill incidents, the company that begat the accident takes full or major responsibility and effort to restore the environment to its prior state. So where does the EPA come in? The engineered microbes have not been developed to be as efficient as the existing microbes, but the EPA can mass produce the existing microbes and deploy them into the oil battlegrounds using the fines they received. Breeding these microbes are fairly simple and cost-effective for all they require is a constant supply of nutrients and they will rapidly multiply. As a natural way of consuming toxic petroleum, oil eating bacteria are an economical and non-lethal antidote for the
Pseudomonas Aeruginosa is a bacteria often found in the environment. It is the most common nosocomial infection affecting people with weak immune systems. Pseudomonas infections are usually spread by medical equipment which are not properly cleaned and by the hands of the medical workers. It can be prevented by washing your hands correctly and by conducting environment screening. They are typically treated with antibiotics. However, they are becoming multi-drug resistant.
The bacteria that was contained within Unknown tube #12 is believed to be Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Figure 1. The bacteria tested to be Gram Stain negative, producing a pink, red color retained from the staining process. When the species of bacteria was plated on nutrient media, the cells produced an irregular and spreading configuration as shown in Figure 2. This same plating test provided the margins and elevation, lobate and hilly, respectively. The specimen was stabbed in a Fluid Thioglycollate Medium (FTM) tube using an inoculated loop of the bacteria. The results of this experimentation indicate the type of oxygen requirement of the bacteria. The test found the bacteria to be aerobic as colonies of the bacteria began to form along the top of the FTM tube (Manual 2017).
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a frequent opportunist pathogen, which can cause infection virtually at any site of the body in immune compromised patients. Treatment of serious pseudomonal infection is difficult and mortality is significant. Antimicrobial combination therapy in such patients is designed to enhance the efficacy of the treatment and is to decrease the risk of development of drug resistance during therapy [11].
Treatment of infectious diseases becomes more difficult in the past few decades. This is especially true for infections caused by the human pathogen P. aeruginosa. This pathogen has the ability to rapidly develop the low antibiotic susceptibility to multiple classes of antibiotics. Some important regulatory factors, such as two-component systems, quorum sensing systems, and the type III secretion systems (T3SS), have been considered as attractive targets to reduce bacterial virulence [33]. The T3SS has been thought a novel target for antibacterial drugs because this virulence factor is required for the full bacterial pathogenesis but does not influence the growth of the parasite. In this study, we presented the effective T3SS inhibitors, TS187 and its analogs, which may have potential in drug development against antibiotic-resistant Pseudomonas. We demonstrate that compounds TS187 and its analogs abolished T3SS expression and effectors secretion. Our data further indicate that TS187 inhibits T3SS gene expression through two distinct mechanisms. First, as reported previously, expression of T3SS-related genes is activated by ExsA, an AraC-type DNA binding protein that recognize a consensus sequence located upstream of the transcriptional start site of T3SS genes [8]. Interestingly, the strains engineered to constitutively express of the exsA-FLAG fusions with different exsA upstream regions with or without TS187 showed different EsxA protein levels (Fig. 2). These
These strains of bacteria have the capacity to transform sugars to acetic acid directly without creating ethanol as an intermediate (Jia et al., 2007).
Everything today is a product of evolution. From apes to Homo sapiens, humans have evolved from crawling on all fours to walking on two, flat feet. Mammals have grown from tiny rodents to a diverse category of cats, horses, dogs, elephants, dolphins, and many others. However, there wouldn't be evolution without natural selection; it's what sets everything apart and gives unique genes a purpose. Without this, species would not have the chance to adapt and thrive in the various, ever-changing climates of the world. Polar bears have thick coats to keep them warm in the arctic, cactus have spikes to protect them from the harsh, desert environments, and dolphins use sonar to communicate and detect objects underwater. However, the traits that
Signaling molecules present only within the natural habitat are thought to be essential for the growth of many bacteria. In the absence of these beneficial interactions and signals, some bacteria may struggle to grow in artificial culture and may be faced with an unfamiliar environment devoid of essential factors (Nichols et al, 2008). Significant efforts have been made in recent years to devise culturing methods for unculturable bacteria. If suitable culture conditions are provided it is possible to cultivate them in the laboratory. These culture techniques include the use of extinction culturing technique with low nutrient media (Button et al, 1998), use of a diffusion chamber that allowed the passage of substances from the natural environment, use of community interactions and cell–cell communication (Dinsdale et al, 2008), use of dilute nutrient media (Hoff et al, 2008) and the use of combinations of techniques (Nichols et al, 2008). The difficulties of cultivating the unculturable bacteria collected from the specific environmental niche are circumvented today by cloning the metagenome in suitable vectors. The term metagenomics is derived from the statistical concept of meta-analysis (the process of statistically combining separate analysis) and genomics (the comprehensive analysis of an organism’s genetic material). The study of metagenomics involves the manipulation of genetic material, recovered directly
Site-directed mutagenesis is a method used to construct amino acid changes in a protein in order to test the function of a specific amino acid. It is the way to study protein structure and function change the amino acid sequence of a protein by altering the DNA sequence of cloned gene4. A particular amino acid is very important in catalytic activity, ligand binding, protein folding or other function. Amino acid residue significance is tested by making conservative substitutions or by changing the amino acid to either alanine or glycine. Site-directed mutagenesis is also used to construct compensatory mutations, which are used to show the importance of specific interactions by making changes in both interacting partners. Each change individual destroy the interaction and combination of changes restores the interaction. These type of experiments are typically between two protein or between protein and nucleic acid. Used site-directed mutagenesis to investigate the interaction between hPol k and DNA1.
Although, this number is much bigger than the actual demand of isoprene; plant sources are unsuitable for large-scale generation of isoprene, due to the difficulty of harvesting isoprene. In the case of microbes, all microbes produce isoprenoids naturally butBacillus sphas been reported to produce highest isoprene naturally via their metabolism. Nevertheless, the isoprene productivity is very lowto exploit Bacillus for commercial production. Hence, the isoprene production pathways in plants have been explored for genetic and metabolic engineering to achieve a promising host for isoprene production. To date, microbes like yeast, E. coli, Cyanobacteria, Bacillus subtilis have been engineered for isoprene production by manipulation of theisoprene production
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is characterized by aerobic, gram negative, motile, non-spore forming bacilli (rods).1 A trait that differentiates P. aeruginosa from other gram-negative bacteria is the fact that it produces indophenol oxidase, which is an enzyme that renders them positive in an oxidase test.1 The type of flagella this organism is known to possess is called a polar flagella, meaning a single flagellum at one pole of the rod.1 This means the motility of the organism is quite limited and can travel only in one direction. In spite of this, the single flagellum, as well as the presence of pili, are major contributions to the motility of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.1 The Pseudomonas genus, the genus from which P. aeruginosa originates from, is known to be an environmental bacteria; hence why this organism is very common in soil, water, and even fresh fruits and vegetables.1 A common characteristic of environmental bacteria, P. aeruginosa being of no exception, is the ways in which they grow. P. aeruginosa grows and thrives in biofilms which are groups of adhering bacteria in aqueous environments. These biofilms eventually begin to produce a slimy substance resembling glue which allows them to spread and stick to other materials/locations. Not only does P. aeruginosa require minimal nutritional requirements, but the entire Pseudomonas genus type does as well.1 Due to P. aeruginosa (usually) only needing acetate as carbon and ammonia as nitrogen,
Biofuels, derived from living organisms rather than petroleum-laden rock, are the focus of current energy research. The need for biofuels and alternative sources of energy will be necessary as the earth’s resources begin to diminish. In cohesion with this concern, the current uses of fossil fuels are a concern as the environment pays an incredible toll for our overuse of this resource. Many have attempted to replace petroleum fuel with the first generation biofuels would require diverting farmland and crops for biofuel production, causing economic and ethical problems and competing with world food supply (Zhang et. al., 2011). The production of these biofuels have a negative effect on the environment, as a backdrop of rising crude oil prices, depletion of resources, and political instability in producing countries, only biomass has the potential to replace the supply of an energy hungry civilization (Antoni et. al., 2007). This is proof that it is crucial to begin to create biofuels that have a lesser negative impact that can sustain the energy demands that we have today. Currently, as seen in the table, microbes have been proven to produce ethanol, biodiesel and hydrogen, which are all sources that can be used for producing renewable fuels. Due to their limited demands on the environment they prove to be an excellent candidate for a successful biofuel.