Syngenomics Applied to the Tryptophan Biosynthetic Pathway.

摘要

We have initiated a long range project aimed at engineering microorganisms with multiple new capacities, using Escherichia coli as the prototype organism. Our approach is to determine which organisms can serve as direct donors of genetic material, in that their genes are expressed by the E. coli cell , and which require additional engineering. We are developing methods for Incorporating up to 300 kb fragments into the E. coli chromosome to allow whole pathways to be encoded by foreign DNA. Also, we are looking for dramatic phenotypic differences in E. coli generated by cloned fragments from foreign organisms, using the mutator phenotype as an example. We have identified genes from Lactococcus lactis and Pseudomonas aeruginosa that cause mutator phenotypes when overexpressed in E. coli and interestingly, one of these encodes a regulator for multiple drug resistance.