Summary: Zymomonas mobilis is a natural ethanologen with many desirable industrial biocatalyst characteristics. In this review, we will discuss work to develop Z. mobilis as a model system for biofuel production from the perspectives of substrate utilization, development for industrial robustness, potential product spectrum, strain evaluation and fermentation strategies. This review also encompasses perspectives related to classical genetic tools and emerging technologies in this context.

Clostridium thermocellum is a thermophilic, obligately anaerobic, Gram-positive bacterium that is a candidate microorganism for converting cellulosic biomass into ethanol through consolidated bioprocessing. Ethanol intolerance is an important metric in terms of process economics, and tolerance has often been described as a complex and likely multigenic trait for which complex gene interactions come into play. Here, we resequence the genome of an ethanol-tolerant mutant, show that the tolerant phenotype is primarily due to a mutated bifunctional acetaldehyde-CoA/alcohol dehydrogenase gene ( adhE ), hypothesize based on structural analysis that cofactor specificity may be affected, and confirm this hypothesis using enzyme assays. Biochemical assays confirm a complete loss of NADH-dependent activity with concomitant acquisition of NADPH-dependent activity, which likely affects electron flow in the mutant. The simplicity of the genetic basis for the ethanol-tolerant phenotype observed here informs rational engineering of mutant microbial strains for cellulosic ethanol production.

To develop pathways for advanced biofuel production, and to understand the impact of host metabolism and environmental conditions on heterologous pathway engineering for economic advanced biofuels production from biomass, we seek to redirect the carbon flow of the model ethanologen Zymomonas mobilis to produce desirable hydrocarbon intermediate 2,3-butanediol (2,3-BDO). 2,3-BDO is a bulk chemical building block, and can be upgraded in high yields to gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. 2,3-BDO biosynthesis pathways from various bacterial species were examined, which include three genes encoding acetolactate synthase, acetolactate decarboxylase, and butanediol dehydrogenase. Bioinformatics analysis was carried out to pinpoint potential bottlenecks for high 2,3-BDO production. Different combinations of 2,3-BDO biosynthesis metabolic pathways using genes from different bacterial species have been constructed. Our results demonstrated that carbon flux can be deviated from ethanol production into 2,3-BDO biosynthesis, and all three heterologous genes are essential to efficiently redirect pyruvate from ethanol production for high 2,3-BDO production in Z. mobilis. The down-selection of best gene combinations up to now enabled Z. mobilis to reach the 2,3-BDO production of more than 10 g/L from glucose and xylose, as well as mixed C6/C5 sugar streams derived from the deacetylation and mechanical refining process. This study confirms the value of integrating bioinformatics analysis and systems biology data during metabolic engineering endeavors, provides guidance for value-added chemical production in Z. mobilis, and reveals the interactions between host metabolism, oxygen levels, and a heterologous 2,3-BDO biosynthesis pathway. Taken together, this work provides guidance for future metabolic engineering efforts aimed at boosting 2,3-BDO titer anaerobically.

Dickeya dadantii is a plant-pathogenic enterobacterium responsible for the soft rot disease of many plants of economic importance. We present here the sequence of strain 3937, a strain widely used as a model system for research on the molecular biology and pathogenicity of this group of bacteria.

Application of CRISPR-based technologies in non-model microorganisms is currently very limited. Here, we reported efficient genome engineering of an important industrial microorganism, Zymomonas mobilis, by repurposing the endogenous Type I-F CRISPR–Cas system upon its functional characterization. This toolkit included a series of genome engineering plasmids, each carrying an artificial self-targeting CRISPR and a donor DNA for the recovery of recombinants. Through this toolkit, various genome engineering purposes were efficiently achieved, including knockout of ZMO0038 (100% efficiency), cas2/3 (100%), and a genomic fragment of >10 kb (50%), replacement of cas2/3 with mCherry gene (100%), in situ nucleotide substitution (100%) and His-tagging of ZMO0038 (100%), and multiplex gene deletion (18.75%) upon optimal donor size determination. Additionally, the Type I-F system was further applied for CRISPRi upon Cas2/3 depletion, which has been demonstrated to successfully silence the chromosomally integrated mCherry gene with its fluorescence intensity reduced by up to 88%. Moreover, we demonstrated that genome engineering efficiency could be improved under a restriction–modification (R–M) deficient background, suggesting the perturbance of genome editing by other co-existing DNA targeting modules such as the R–M system. This study might shed light on exploiting and improving CRISPR–Cas systems in other microorganisms for genome editing and metabolic engineering practices.