Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States.
Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2013 Aug;24(4):627-32. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2012.11.012. Epub 2012 Dec 27.
Advances in metabolic engineering have given rise to the biological production of novel fuels and chemicals, but yields are often low without significant optimization. One generalizable solution is to create a specialized organelle for the sequestration of engineered metabolic pathways. Bacterial microcompartments are an excellent scaffold for such an organelle. These compartments consist of a porous protein shell that encapsulates enzymes. To repurpose these structures, researchers have begun to determine how the protein shell is assembled, how pores may be used to control small molecule transport across the protein shell, and how to target heterologous enzymes to the compartment interior. With these advances, it will soon be possible to use engineered forms of these protein shells to create designer organelles.
代谢工程的进步催生了新型燃料和化学品的生物生产，但如果没有重大优化，产量往往很低。一个普遍适用的解决方案是创建一个专门的细胞器来隔离工程代谢途径。细菌微室是这种细胞器的绝佳支架。这些隔间由多孔蛋白质外壳组成，其中包裹着酶。为了重新利用这些结构，研究人员已经开始确定蛋白质外壳是如何组装的，如何利用孔来控制小分子穿过蛋白质外壳的运输，以及如何将异源酶靶向到隔间内部。随着这些进展，很快就可以使用这些蛋白质外壳的工程形式来创建设计的细胞器。
