Communities of Niche-Optimized Strains: Small-Genome Organism Consortia in Bioproduction

Stephan Noack; Meike Baumgart

doi:10.1016/j.tibtech.2018.07.011

Communities of Niche-Optimized Strains: Small-Genome Organism Consortia in Bioproduction

Trends Biotechnol. 2019 Feb;37(2):126-139. doi: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2018.07.011. Epub 2018 Aug 13.

Authors

Stephan Noack¹, Meike Baumgart²

Affiliations

¹ Institut für Bio- und Geowissenschaften, IBG-1: Biotechnologie, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany; Authors contributed equally. Electronic address: s.noack@fz-juelich.de.
² Institut für Bio- und Geowissenschaften, IBG-1: Biotechnologie, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany; Authors contributed equally. Electronic address: m.baumgart@fz-juelich.de.

PMID: 30115374
DOI: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2018.07.011

Abstract

Bacterial genome reduction is a common phenomenon in nature that has also inspired several projects with biotechnologically relevant organisms. In many cases, however, no performance improvements with the streamlined chassis were obtained. A comparative analysis of natural and synthetic reduced genomes and their corresponding ecological niches reveals that: (i) deleting expressed genes can lead to noticeable energy conservation usable for improved biomass or product synthesis; and (ii) the simplified strains depend on the environment (e.g., another community member) to complement deleted functions. Based on this analysis, we introduce the concept of Community of Niche-optimized Strains (CoNoS) as an alternative strategy to generate superior biotechnological production processes.

Keywords: CoNoS; genome reduction; minimal genome; relevant genes; streamlining.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Review

MeSH terms

Biological Products / metabolism*
Genome, Microbial*
Metabolic Engineering / methods*
Metabolic Networks and Pathways / genetics*
Microbial Consortia*
Synthetic Biology / methods*

Substances

Biological Products