Key Laboratory of Green Process and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Biochemical Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing 100190, China; College of Chemical Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19 A Yuquan Road, Beijing 100049, China.
Key Laboratory of Green Process and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Biochemical Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing 100190, China; College of Chemical Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19 A Yuquan Road, Beijing 100049, China; Processes Design and Development Department, Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute, Nasr City, Cairo 11727, Egypt.
Bioresour Technol. 2020 Dec;317:124018. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2020.124018. Epub 2020 Aug 14.
Complicated production procedures and superior characteristics of nano-sized sulfur elevate its price to 25-40 fold higher than micrograde kind. Also, natural gas hydrogen sulfide levels are restricted because of its toxic environmental consequences. Thioalkalivibrio versutus is a polyextremophilic industrial autotroph with high natural gas desulfurization capability. Here, nanometric (>50 nm) sulfur bioproduction using T. versutus while desulfurizing natural gas was validated. Also, this production was enhanced by 166.7% via lowering sulfate production by 55.1%. A specially-developed CRISPR system, with 42% editing efficiency, simplified the genome editing workflow scheme for this challenging bacterium. In parallel, sulfur metabolism was uncovered using proteins mining and transcriptome studies for defining sulfate-producing key genes (heterodisulfide reductase-like complex, sulfur dioxygenase, sulfite dehydrogenase and sulfite oxidase). This study provided cost-effective nanometric sulfur production and improved this production using a novel CRISPR strategy, which could be suitable for industrial polyextremophiles, after uncovering sulfur pathways in T. versutus.
复杂的生产工艺和纳米级硫磺的优越特性使其价格比微级硫磺高出 25-40 倍。此外，由于其具有毒性的环境后果，天然气中的硫化氢含量受到限制。硫烷菌属（Thioalkalivibrio versutus）是一种具有高天然气脱硫能力的多极端工业自养生物。在这里，验证了使用 T. versutus 在脱硫天然气的同时生产纳米级（>50nm）硫磺。此外，通过将硫酸盐产量降低 55.1%，将产量提高了 166.7%。特别开发的 CRISPR 系统具有 42%的编辑效率，简化了针对这种具有挑战性的细菌的基因组编辑工作流程方案。同时，通过蛋白质挖掘和转录组研究揭示了硫磺代谢，以确定产生硫酸盐的关键基因（异二硫键还原酶样复合物、硫磺双加氧酶、亚硫酸脱氢酶和亚硫酸氧化酶）。本研究提供了具有成本效益的纳米级硫磺生产，并使用新型 CRISPR 策略提高了这种生产效率，这可能适合于工业多极端微生物，同时揭示了 T. versutus 中的硫磺途径。
