Academia Sinica President James Liao (廖俊智) and a research team yesterday said that they have developed the world’s first synthetic bacterial strain that can convert methanol into valuable chemicals, signaling new possibilities for recycling carbon.
Team members shared their findings at a news conference at the institution in Taipei, after their paper, titled “Converting Escherichia coli to a Synthetic Methylotroph Growing Solely on Methanol,” was published in the journal Cell on Monday last week.
Some bacteria in nature, namely methanotrophs, can convert methane — a greenhouse gas — into methanol and subsequently utilize methanol as a food source, but current scientific techniques could not easily modify its DNA to produce valuable products, said Frederic Chen (陳育孝), the lead author of the paper.
Photo courtesy of Academia Sinica
Chen said that he just last week finished his doctorate defense with the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was Liao’s student.
While existing industrial techniques can convert methane into methanol, they require large amounts of electricity to produce high pressures and temperatures of up to 500°C only to produce low-value industrial products, he said.
Scientists have been hoping to develop a synthetic methylotroph since the idea was broached more than a decade ago, and the Academia Sinica team is the first to succeed in the effort, Chen added.
The team achieved the result by identifying the key enzymes regulating E. coli through a metabolic prediction model and reprogramming E. coli into a synthetic methylotrophic strain through genome editing tools and artificial evolution, he said.
The technique can convert methanol into valuable chemicals, medicines, and fuels, forming a carbon cycle with high green economic value that can help with carbon reduction, he added.
The new strain only possesses three foreign genes different from ordinary E. coli and can be cultivated at a temperature of 37°C, he added.
The research was conducted by Academia Sinica members, Liao said, adding that electron microscopy, proteomics and three different gene sequencing techniques were keys to characterizing the synthetic strain.
All techniques applicable to ordinary E. coli would also be applicable to the synthetic strain, he said.
The journal’s reviewers hailed the findings as “setting the new standard for synthetic biology,” Chen said.
While they are using methanol as the feedstock and the synthetic bacteria as a biocatalyst, they hope to make the strain able to feed on carbon dioxide and methane in a bid to alleviate greenhouse effects, Chen added.
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