Fish oil from a bioreactor
Bacteria can be engaged in the production of fish oil
ChemPort.Ru based on the materials of Chemistry World: Slime bacteria produce an alternative to fish oilResearchers from Germany, who are searching for a reliable and environmentally safe source of medically important polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), have demonstrated that these acids can be obtained with the help of soil bacteria.
Researchers are constantly studying the role that fish oil-based supplements play for human health, and for whom they may be most useful. At the same time, no one is going to deny the fact that polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are part of the triglycerides that form fish oil, are good for health. However, overfishing, climatic changes and ocean acidification have led to a decrease in the number of fish in the entire world ocean and, accordingly, to the impoverishment of sources of high-quality fish oil.
Rolf Müller and colleagues from Saarland University have found that certain varieties of myxobacterium, also known as mucus-forming bacteria, named after the mucus they secrete in order to move, have genes responsible for the synthesis of omega-3 unsaturated acids of a certain structure. These genes are responsible for the expression of enzymes known as polyunsaturated fatty acid synthases.
Multi-enzyme systems are encoded using biosynthetic gene clusters of polyunsaturated fatty acids. At the moment, Muller's group has discovered two different directions of synthesis.
Thus, the bacterium Sorangium cellulosum can create linoleic acid, and the recently discovered species of Aetherobacter, as it turned out, produces significant amounts of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA, EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA, DHA).
Muller believes that the existence of various biosynthetic methods for the synthesis of polyunsaturated fatty acids with such a variety of products within the same bacterial family is an outstanding discovery in the field of research on the biosynthesis of polyunsaturated fatty acids.
Myxobacterial methods of biosynthesis of polyunsaturated fatty acids differ from the features of biosynthesis characteristic of marine organisms in terms of gene organization, the location of the catalytic domain and the identity of the sequence of encoded synthases of polyunsaturated fatty acids. It is noteworthy that a unique domain has been identified in these myxobacterial synthases of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which most likely acts as a 1-acylglycerol-3-phosphate O-acyltransferase, and its role is in the direct transfer of chains of synthesized fatty acids from polyunsaturated fatty acid synthase to fats.
Natural producer strains grow slowly and are difficult to deal with. Nevertheless, a group of researchers reports that the genes can be transferred to Myxococcus xanthus Myxobacteria, which are a fast-growing model of the myxobacteria strain, as a result of which it becomes possible to express polyunsaturated fatty acid synthases already in genetically modified organisms.
Experts in the field of natural products praise this example of using natural biosynthetic pathways to create materials with high-quality additional functions. Joern Piel from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in Switzerland believes that the results obtained by the researchers increase the importance of myxobacteria as very rich sources of biologically useful chemicals. The fact that these bacteria can express polyunsaturated fatty acid synthases opens up interesting possibilities for metabolic engineering.
Craig Townsend from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, believes that the discovery of a gene cluster in Aetherobacter, which can produce the desired polyunsaturated fatty acids in much larger quantities than other microbes, is important for two reasons: first, there is an additional opportunity to study how The organization of the catalytic domain and the internal kinetics in type I enzymes affect the comparative parameters of the product, and secondly, how these differences can be used to lead to an economically feasible biosynthetic process.
Article by Gemperlein et al. Polyunsaturated fatty acid biosynthesis in myxobacteria: Different PUFA synthases and their product diversity is published in the journal Chemical Science.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru23.01.2014