Ingelman Henri, Heffernan James K, Valgepea Kaspar
Institute of Bioengineering, University of Tartu, 50411 Tartu, Estonia.
Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), The University of Queensland, 4072 St. Lucia, Australia; ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology (CoESB), The University of Queensland, 4072 St. Lucia, Australia.
Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2025 Jun;93:103305. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2025.103305. Epub 2025 Apr 22.
Gas fermentation using acetogens can help humankind transition from petroleum-based industries to more sustainable alternatives. Acetogens are a unique set of organisms that efficiently convert carbon oxide waste gases into chemicals, such as ethanol and acetate. While acetogens are already used in commercially operated bioprocess facilities, the field is still affected by challenging genetic manipulation workflows and a developing knowledge of acetogen metabolism. Adaptive laboratory evolution (ALE) can uniquely contribute here, through evolution of organisms guided by synthetically created niches, which delivers strains with industrially relevant phenotypes and helps to resolve genotype-phenotype relationships. Here, we review the expanding use of ALE for acetogens, showcasing results regarding fundamental understanding of acetogens and improvement of phenotypes - faster growth/substrate utilisation, elimination of media components, improving stress tolerance, and improving growth and robustness in bioreactor cultures. These works provide the field with opportunities to further engineer and manipulate acetogen traits for industrial bioprocesses and improve the understanding of genotype-phenotype relationships.
利用产乙酸菌进行气体发酵有助于人类从以石油为基础的产业过渡到更可持续的替代产业。产乙酸菌是一类独特的生物体，能够有效地将二氧化碳废气转化为乙醇和乙酸等化学物质。虽然产乙酸菌已被用于商业运营的生物工艺设施中，但该领域仍受到具有挑战性的基因操作流程以及对产乙酸菌代谢认识不断发展的影响。适应性实验室进化（ALE）在这方面具有独特的贡献，它通过在合成创建的生态位引导下对生物体进行进化，从而获得具有工业相关表型的菌株，并有助于解析基因型 - 表型关系。在此，我们综述了ALE在产乙酸菌中的广泛应用，展示了关于对产乙酸菌的基本理解以及表型改善方面的成果——更快的生长/底物利用、去除培养基成分、提高胁迫耐受性以及改善生物反应器培养中的生长和稳健性。这些工作为该领域提供了进一步设计和操纵产乙酸菌特性以用于工业生物工艺的机会，并增进了对基因型 - 表型关系的理解。
