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The enzyme formaldehyde dehydrogenase (FalDH) from Pseudomonas putida is of particular interest for biotechnological applications as it catalyzes the oxidation of formaldehyde independent of glutathione. However, the consumption of a stoichiometric amount of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) can be challenging at the metabolic level as this may affect many other NAD-linked processes. A potential solution is to engineer FalDH to utilize non-natural cofactors. Here we devised FalDH variants to favor nicotinamide cytosine dinucleotide (NCD) by structure-guided modification of the binding pocket for the adenine moiety of NAD. Several mutants were obtained and the best one FalDH 9B2 had over 150-fold higher preference for NCD than NAD. Molecular docking analysis indicated that the cofactor binding pocket shrunk to better fit NCD, a smaller-sized cofactor. FalDH 9B2 together with other NCD-linked enzymes offer opportunities to assemble orthogonal pathways for biological conversion of C1 molecules.

The sophorolipid-producing strain Starmerella bombicola CGMCC 1576 has a remarkable ability to produce sophorolipids (SLs) under the acidic and lactonic forms with almost equal proportion. In this study, we found the gene encoding for the long-chain acyl-CoA synthetase (ALCS). This enzyme was putatively identified as a membrane-bound long-chain fatty acid transport protein and contributed to the uptake of long-chain fatty acids. Disruption of the alcs gene resulted in an impaired growth of the alcs-deleted mutant in minimal media containing different fatty acids (C12:0, C14:0, C16:0, C18:0, C22:0, and C24:0) as the sole carbon source and led to a dramatic decrease in the uptake of the fluorescent-tagged long-chain fatty acid analogue—boron dipyrromethene difluoride dodecanoic acid (BODIPY-3823). The absence of this alcs gene caused obvious phenotype changes. Compared with the wild-type strain, the yield and compositions of the SLs produced by the gene-deleted mutant of ∆alcs::six showed almost no lactonic form of SLs, and the acidic SLs were composed of medium-chain. The ALCS enzyme was heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli JM109 (DE3) with pMAL-c2x-alcs. The enzyme was purified through a maltose-binding protein (MBP) affinity chromatography column and was confirmed to be homogeneous by SDS-PAGE. The recombinant enzyme could catalyze the formation of the long-chain acyl-CoA when the long-chain fatty acids and the coenzyme A were used as substrates.

Native lignocellulolytic enzyme systems secreted by filamentous fungi can be further optimized by protein engineering or supplementation of exogenous enzyme components. We developed a protein production and evaluation system in cellulase-producing fungus Penicillium oxalicum. First, by deleting the major amylase gene amy15A, a strain Δ15A producing few extracellular proteins on starch was constructed. Then, three lignocellulolytic enzymes (BGL4, Xyn10B, and Cel12A) with originally low expression levels were successfully expressed with selected constitutive promoters in strain Δ15A. BGL4 and Cel12A overexpression resulted in increased specific filter paper activity (FPA), while the overexpression of Xyn10B improved volumetric FPA but not specific FPA. By switching the culture medium, this platform is convenient to produce originally low-expressed lignocellulolytic enzymes in relatively high purities on starch and to evaluate the effect of their supplementation on the performance of a complex cellulase system on cellulose.