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

糖过丁乳酸梭菌是一种重要的商业细菌，用于生产工业溶剂正丁醇。由于缺乏梭菌遗传工具，我们对这一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传递系统，用于构建人类病原体艰难梭菌的综合转座子文库（Dembek et al, 2016）。最近获得的BBSRC冲击加速奖允许进行原理验证研究，该研究证明了在C. saccharoperbutylacetonicum中使用该系统的可行性。该项目的目的是为了更深入地了解各种相关原料的产孢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.