Bacterial nano-scaffold hails biofuel breakthrough

Cell biologists have built a miniature scaffold inside bacteria that they say can be used to bolster cellular productivity, with implications for the next generation of biofuel production.

The research team, led by Professor Martin Warren at Kent’s School of Biosciences, working with Professors Dek Woolfson and Paul Verkade at Bristol, found nanotubes could be used to generate a scaffold inside bacteria. With as many as a thousand tubes fitting into each cell, the tubular scaffold can be used to increase the bacteria’s efficiency and provide the foundation for a new era of cellular protein engineering.

By applying this new technology to enzymes required for the production of ethanol ­– an important biofuel – the researchers were able to increase alcohol production by over 200%. Professor Martin Warren said: “Specifically, the enzymes pyruvate decarboxylase and alcohol dehydrogenase have been directed to the filaments, leading to enhanced ethanol production in these engineered bacterial cells compared to those that do not produce the scaffold. This is consistent with improved metabolic efficiency through enzyme colocation.”

The researchers designed protein molecules and developed techniques to allow E. coli to make long tubes that contain a coupling device to which other specific components can be attached. A production line of enzymes could then be arranged along the tubes, generating efficient internal factories for the coordinated production of important chemicals.

This Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) funded collaborative project between the University of Kent, University College London and the University of Bristol entitled Engineered synthetic scaffolds for organizing proteins within the bacterial cytoplasm is now published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.