PNAs: team Zhang Youming and Bian Xiaoying of Shandong University have made new progress in microbial genome editing and exploration

Recently, the team of Professor Zhang Youming, State Key Laboratory of microbial technology, Shandong University, has made new progress in microbial genome editing and genome discovery, and has established a platform for genome editing and in situ activation of covert biosynthesis pathways in Berkeley with red / ET DNA recombination engineering technology as the core Relevant research results were published online in proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (DOI: 10.1073 / PNAS 172094115) Wang Xue, Ph.D., Zhou Haibo, Ph.D., and Chen Hanna, Ph.D., pH Microorganisms are important sources of drugs and biopesticides The whole genome sequencing shows that there are still a large number of secret biosynthetic gene clusters in microorganisms that have not yet been developed, and the natural products encoded by the secret gene clusters are also a drug resource that has not been fully explored It is an effective strategy to explore the hidden gene clusters by using the promoter transformation project to activate these gene clusters However, the implementation of this strategy is limited by the lack of genome editing technology, especially in the non model bacteria with abundant gene clusters In this project, a new pair of homologous recombinase was found by genome scanning In addition, a transient expression plasmid of the recombinant enzyme was constructed and applied to the promoter transformation project to activate the unknown gene cluster Therefore, an efficient genome editing technology was established in a number of non model Berkeley strains without effective gene manipulation tools On this basis, the genome of three strains of Berkeley strains was explored, activated and identified a number of hidden gene clusters, and two new types of genes were identified The structure and bioactivity of lipeptide compounds, glidopeptins and rhodomides, were studied In addition, this study established a set of effective genomic editing technology of Berkeley, which can easily and quickly delete and modify the genome of a variety of Berkeley, so it provides a powerful technical support for the construction of natural product heterologous expression of universal chassis bacteria This study greatly promoted the development of genome editing and genome discovery of new natural products of Berkeley, and laid a technical foundation for the deep utilization and development of Berkeley resources The strategy of using recombinase to build efficient genome editing technology and activate gene clusters can also be applied to other bacteria, and natural products with good activity can be found in large-scale from bacteria for drug development In addition, this research has opened up the research of directly establishing efficient genome editing technology system in natural product producing bacteria, which is conducive to activating silent gene clusters in native bacteria, directly editing native bacteria and biological combination synthesis for yield and structure optimization Corresponding author: Professor Zhang Youming, Professor Bian Xiaoying