Plasticity engineering of plant monoterpene synthases and application for microbial production of monoterpenoids

Biotechnology for Biofuels

Zetian Qiu¹  Dengwei Lei¹  Guang-Rong Zhao²  Jianjun Qiao² 

[1]Frontier Science Center for Synthetic Biology and Key Laboratory of Systems Bioengineering (Ministry of Education), School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Tianjin University, Yaguan Road 135, Jinnan District, 300350, Tianjin, China

[2]Frontier Science Center for Synthetic Biology and Key Laboratory of Systems Bioengineering (Ministry of Education), School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Tianjin University, Yaguan Road 135, Jinnan District, 300350, Tianjin, China

[3]SynBio Research Platform, Collaborative Innovation Centre of Chemical Science and Engineering (Tianjin), Tianjin University, Yaguan Road 135, Jinnan District, 300350, Tianjin, China

关键词: Monoterpene synthase;    Functional plasticity;    Synthetic biology;    Enzyme engineering;    Substrate selectivity;    Product specificity;    Monoterpenoid production;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s13068-021-01998-8

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

Plant monoterpenoids with structural diversities have extensive applications in food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and biofuels. Due to the strong dependence on the geographical locations and seasonal annual growth of plants, agricultural production for monoterpenoids is less effective. Chemical synthesis is also uneconomic because of its high cost and pollution. Recently, emerging synthetic biology enables engineered microbes to possess great potential for the production of plant monoterpenoids. Both acyclic and cyclic monoterpenoids have been synthesized from fermentative sugars through heterologously reconstructing monoterpenoid biosynthetic pathways in microbes. Acting as catalytic templates, plant monoterpene synthases (MTPSs) take elaborate control of the monoterpenoids production. Most plant MTPSs have broad substrate or product properties, and show functional plasticity. Thus, the substrate selectivity, product outcomes, or enzymatic activities can be achieved by the active site mutations and domain swapping of plant MTPSs. This makes plasticity engineering a promising way to engineer MTPSs for efficient production of natural and non-natural monoterpenoids in microbial cell factories. Here, this review summarizes the key advances in plasticity engineering of plant MTPSs, including the fundamental aspects of functional plasticity, the utilization of natural and non-natural substrates, and the outcomes from product isomers to complexity-divergent monoterpenoids. Furthermore, the applications of plasticity engineering for improving monoterpenoids production in microbes are addressed.

【 授权许可】

CC BY