BBSRC iCase - High-throughput genetic analysis of a butanol-producing Clostridia

糖化丁基丙酮梭菌是一种重要的商业菌种，用于生产工业溶剂正丁醇。由于缺乏梭状芽胞杆菌的遗传工具，我们对这个物种的了解一直受到阻碍。我们开发了一种高效的水手转座子递送系统，我们用它来构建人类病原体艰难梭菌中的全面转座子文库(Dembek等人，2016)。最近BBSRC的冲击加速奖允许进行一项原则证明研究，证明该系统在糖基丁基丙酮中使用的可行性。这个项目的目的是更深入地了解在各种相关原料上形成孢子和生长所需的代谢途径。这将使合理的代谢工程能够改善生长和溶剂生产特性，同时降低成本。

Clostridium saccharoperbutylacetonicum is a commercially important bacterial species, used for the production of the industrial solvent n-butanol. Our understanding of this species has been hampered by a lack of Clostridial genetic tools. We have developed an efficient mariner transposon delivery system which we used to construct comprehensive transposon libraries in the human pathogen C. difficile (Dembek et al, 2016). A recent BBSRC Impact Acceleration Award allowed a proof-of-principle study that demonstrated the feasibility of using this system in C. saccharoperbutylacetonicum. The aim of this project is to gain a deeper understanding of the metabolic pathways required for sporulation and growth on a variety of relevant feedstocks. This will enable rational metabolic engineering to improve growth and solvent production characteristics whilst reducing costs.