Mapping the Membrane Proteome of Anaerobic Gut Fungi Identifies a Wealth of Carbohydrate Binding Proteins and Transporters Susanna Seppälä1,2, Kevin V
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Seppälä et al. Microb Cell Fact (2016) 15:212 DOI 10.1186/s12934-016-0611-7 Microbial Cell Factories RESEARCH Open Access Mapping the membrane proteome of anaerobic gut fungi identifies a wealth of carbohydrate binding proteins and transporters Susanna Seppälä1,2, Kevin V. Solomon2,3, Sean P. Gilmore2, John K. Henske2 and Michelle A. O’Malley2* Abstract Background: Engineered cell factories that convert biomass into value-added compounds are emerging as a timely alternative to petroleum-based industries. Although often overlooked, integral membrane proteins such as solute transporters are pivotal for engineering efficient microbial chassis. Anaerobic gut fungi, adapted to degrade raw plant biomass in the intestines of herbivores, are a potential source of valuable transporters for biotechnology, yet very little is known about the membrane constituents of these non-conventional organisms. Here, we mined the transcriptome of three recently isolated strains of anaerobic fungi to identify membrane proteins responsible for sensing and trans- porting biomass hydrolysates within a competitive and rather extreme environment. Results: Using sequence analyses and homology, we identified membrane protein-coding sequences from assem- bled transcriptomes from three strains of anaerobic gut fungi: Neocallimastix californiae, Anaeromyces robustus, and Piromyces finnis. We identified nearly 2000 transporter components: about half of these are involved in the general secretory pathway and intracellular sorting of proteins; the rest are predicted to be small-solute transporters. Unex- pectedly, we found a number of putative sugar binding proteins that are associated with prokaryotic uptake systems; and approximately 100 class C G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) with non-canonical putative sugar binding domains. Conclusions: We report the first comprehensive characterization of the membrane protein machinery of biotech- nologically relevant anaerobic gut fungi. Apart from identifying conserved machinery for protein sorting and secre- tion, we identify a large number of putative solute transporters that are of interest for biotechnological applications. Notably, our data suggests that the fungi display a plethora of carbohydrate binding domains at their surface, perhaps as a means to sense and sequester some of the sugars that their biomass degrading, extracellular enzymes produce. Keywords: Microbial engineering, Membrane proteins, Anaerobic fungi, Carbohydrate binding proteins, Lignocellulose Background increasingly clear that integral membrane proteins, in The design and construction of microbial cell factories is particular transporters, are critical for the performance often focused on the engineering of intracellular enzymes and stability of microbial production strains [1–4]. and pathways, and the role of membrane-embedded pro- Membrane-embedded transport proteins mediate the teins is often overlooked. It is nevertheless becoming cellular uptake and extrusion of a wide diversity of sol- utes. As a consequence, adding or engineering a suit- *Correspondence: [email protected] able uptake system into a production strain may greatly 2 Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California, Santa enhance substrate utilization and flux towards product Barbara, CA 93106, USA [5–7]. Likewise, secretion systems increase flux, resolve Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s) 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/ publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Seppälä et al. Microb Cell Fact (2016) 15:212 Page 2 of 14 toxicity-caused limitations, and facilitate product purifi- [24, 25]. Importantly, the transporters and receptors that cation by secretion of the desired product to the extracel- we identify have the potential to advance metabolic engi- lular environment [8–10]. neering efforts for biomass utilization and conversion in Besides introducing and engineering known trans- model microbes [19]. Overall, this serves as the first com- port proteins for biotechnological applications, there prehensive study of the membrane protein components is a critical need to identify novel transporters from the within anaerobic gut fungi, providing deeper insight into wealth of sequence data that we are currently amassing the physiology of these understudied organisms, and a from nature [11]. Fortunately, integral membrane pro- wealth of transporters and receptors that can be further teins are typically easy to predict from primary sequence adopted for strain engineering. data, as they contain one or more stretches of ~20 hydro- phobic amino acid residues (transmembrane segments). Results and discussion Similarly, secreted proteins that contain a hydrophobic, Integral membrane proteins in anaerobic gut fungi: a amino-terminal cleavable signal peptide can also be iden- birds‑eye view tified using this approach [12–15]. Using sequence analy- Recently, three novel strains of anaerobic gut fungi were ses and homology, putative membrane proteins may be isolated from animal feces: Neocallimastix californiae (N. sorted into functional classes such as receptor proteins californiae) from goat, Anaeromyces robustus (A. robus- or solute transporters, to serve as guidelines for down- tus) from sheep, and Piromyces finnis (P. finnis) from stream experimental targeting and characterization [16, horse [26]. To assemble a complete transcriptome, RNA 17]. was collected from each strain grown on a number of dif- To increase the known repertoire of transporters that ferent representative substrates ranging from insoluble are of particular interest for cell factory engineering, it is plant material and cellulose to soluble carbon sources inviting to look at the membrane proteins from organ- such as cellobiose and glucose [19]. Here, we identi- isms that nature has adapted for food sources that are out fied secreted and integral membrane proteins from over of reach for conventional microbes. One such example 60,000 transcripts using complementary bioinformatics is the anaerobic gut fungi that inhabit the intestines of approaches. As is shown in Fig. 1, about 20% of assem- herbivores such as horses and sheep, where they secrete bled transcripts in each fungal strain encode proteins powerful cellulases and other saccharolytic enzymes that have a predicted signal peptide and/or transmem- that break down recalcitrant plant biomass into digest- brane segments [15, 27]. About a third of the trafficked ible sugars [18–21]. A variety of hydrolyzed sugars and proteins are predicted to be completely secreted to low molecular weight cellodextrins are both sensed and the extracellular environment; among these are cellu- transported across fungal bilayers. Whereas their tre- lases, glucosidases and proteases that allow the fungi to mendous biotechnological potential is unquestionable, degrade plant material extracellularly into soluble sug- isolation and cultivation of the gut fungi under labora- ars [19, 28]. The remaining two thirds of the trafficked tory conditions has proven challenging and only a rela- proteins have at least one predicted non-cleaved trans- tively small number of strains have been isolated to date. membrane segment, and as such they are likely integral Moreover, very little is known about the membranes membrane proteins: there are 4353 transcripts encoding and membrane proteins of these early branching fungi, putative membrane proteins in N. californiae, 2627 mem- and the extreme AT-richness of their genomes have pre- brane protein transcripts in A. robustus, and 2383 mem- cluded high quality genomic data from being obtained brane protein transcripts in P. finnis (Fig. 1). Almost half [22, 23]. of these proteins are predicted to have only one trans- Here, we mined transcriptomic data collected from membrane segment, i.e. they are bitopic, and these are three recently isolated strains of anaerobic fungi, Neocal- displayed separately as these proteins may be cleaved and limastix californiae, Anaeromyces robustus and Piromy- released to the extracellular environment [15]. ces finnis, for integral membrane proteins that would shed As shown in Fig. 2, gene ontology (GO) annotations light on the physiology of these unusual microorganisms. suggest that at least a third of the membrane proteins In particular, we sought to characterize the membrane- in each fungal strain are involved in transport, sens- bound machinery that underlies their remarkable ability ing, signaling or catalysis [29]. Within these groups are to survive and persist in the competitive, biomass-rich pumps and channels for diverse solutes, peptides and environment of the herbivore gut. We hypothesized that proteins; GPCRs and associated factors; and proteins apart from the secreted biomass-degrading enzymes, the with catalytic activity such as cellulases, chitinases, glu- fungi possess membrane-embedded transporters and cosidases and glycosyl transferases. Many proteins have receptors that support the lignocellulolytic lifestyle of the more than one