Application of Metabolomics to Microbial Breeding

Introduction

Microorganisms have been used for many years to produce useful materials in a wide range of industrial fields, including food, biotechnology, and energy. In the food sector, microorganisms are used to produce foods by the fermentation process, such as alcoholic beverages and fermented foods, and in the biotechnology sector microorganisms are used for the large scale production of amino acids and antibiotics. In the energy sector, it is anticipated that microorganism will be used for biofuel production, though lowering the cost presents an outstanding problem. Although microorganisms are already used in the production of a variety of useful materials, genetic modification and breeding is still performed with the aim of improving production efficiency. Metabolomics presents useful tools for the evaluation of metabolic changes during microorganism breeding, and for understanding metabolic changes related to a target material and its precursors and intermediates. By deepening our understanding of the metabolic pathways involved in material production, metabolomics is expected to result in more efficient materials production. In this article, we discuss an example of LC/MS analysis of how the sulfur- containing metabolites vary during culture of a cysteine-producing Escherichia coli (E. coli) when either thiosulfuric acid or sulfuric acid is added as the sulphur source during cysteine synthesis.

July 26, 2016 GMT