Optogenetic Control of the Lac Operon for Bacterial Chemical and Protein Production

Overview

Journal Nat Chem Biol

Specialties Biochemistry
Biology
Chemistry

Date 2020 Sep 8

PMID 32895498

Citations 39

Authors

Makoto A Lalwani

Samantha S Ip

Cesar Carrasco-Lopez

Catherine Day

Evan M Zhao

Hinako Kawabe

Jose L Avalos

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Control of the lac operon with isopropyl β-D-1-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG) has been used to regulate gene expression in Escherichia coli for countless applications, including metabolic engineering and recombinant protein production. However, optogenetics offers unique capabilities, such as easy tunability, reversibility, dynamic induction strength and spatial control, that are difficult to obtain with chemical inducers. We have developed a series of circuits for optogenetic regulation of the lac operon, which we call OptoLAC, to control gene expression from various IPTG-inducible promoters using only blue light. Applying them to metabolic engineering improves mevalonate and isobutanol production by 24% and 27% respectively, compared to IPTG induction, in light-controlled fermentations scalable to at least two-litre bioreactors. Furthermore, OptoLAC circuits enable control of recombinant protein production, reaching yields comparable to IPTG induction but with easier tunability of expression. OptoLAC circuits are potentially useful to confer light control over other cell functions originally designed to be IPTG-inducible.

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