Respiratory Behaviour of a Zymomonas Mobilis Adhb::Kan Mutant Supports the Hypothesis of Two Alcohol Dehydrogenase Isoenzymes Ca
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Elsevier - Publisher Connector FEBS Letters 580 (2006) 5084–5088 Respiratory behaviour of a Zymomonas mobilis adhB::kanr mutant supports the hypothesis of two alcohol dehydrogenase isoenzymes catalysing opposite reactions U. Kalnenieksa,*, N. Galininaa, M.M. Tomaa, J.L. Pickfordb, R. Rutkisa, R.K. Pooleb a Institute of Microbiology and Biotechnology, University of Latvia, Kronvalda Boulv. 4, LV-1586, Riga, Latvia b Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, The University of Sheffield, Firth Court, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK Received 10 July 2006; revised 9 August 2006; accepted 11 August 2006 Available online 28 August 2006 Edited by Barry Halliwell However, under aerobic growth conditions, ethanol synthe- Abstract Perturbation of the aerobic steady-state in a chemo- stat culture of the ethanol-producing bacterium Zymomonas sis competes for reducing equivalents with respiration. Re- mobilis with a small pulse of ethanol causes a burst of ethanol cently, we found that competition between the two ADH oxidation, although the reactant ratio of the alcohol dehydroge- isoenzymes and the respiratory chain may lead to aerobic stea- nase (ADH) reaction ([NADH][acetaldehyde][H+])/([etha- dy-states with unexpected properties. Perturbation of the aer- + nol][NAD ]) remains above the Keq value. Simultaneous obic steady-state in a chemostat culture with a small pulse of catalysis of ethanol synthesis and oxidation by the two ADH iso- ethanol caused a rapid, transient burst of ethanol oxidation, enzymes, residing in different redox microenvironments, has been seen as a rise of acetaldehyde concentration and intracellular proposed previously. In the present study, this hypothesis is ver- NADH [7], and a fall of pO2 in the culture. Notably, a slow ified by construction of an ADH-deficient strain and by demon- net synthesis of ethanol was taking place during the aerobic stration that it lacks the oxidative burst in response to steady-state, in full accordance with the measured bulk reac- perturbation of its aerobic steady-state with ethanol. Ó 2006 Federation of European Biochemical Societies. Pub- tant ratio, which was well above Keq even after addition of lished by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. the ethanol pulse. In order to explain our finding, we proposed operation of an ‘‘ethanol cycle’’ – a novel redox-driven futile Keywords: Alcohol dehydrogenase; Continuous culture; cycle, involving both ADH isoenzymes, simultaneously cata- Respiration; Metabolic channelling; Zymomonas mobilis lysing opposite reactions (Fig. 1A). Both reactions were sup- posed to proceed several times faster than the resulting slow net synthesis of ethanol, thus explaining the rapid burst of oxi- dation upon ethanol addition by perturbation of the cycle [7]. It must be noted that a simultaneous catalysis of opposite reac- 1. Introduction tions by two isoenzymes in a homogeneous medium as pic- tured in Fig. 1A would not be thermodynamically feasible Reversible reduction of acetaldehyde to ethanol, which ter- without an external energy supply to one of the reactions. As minates the fermentative pathways of various ethanol-produc- the possibility of energization of the ADH reaction by ATP ing microorganisms, is catalysed by NAD(P)H-dependent or by other metabolically available energy source seems highly unlikely, we proposed that the reaction medium should be het- alcohol dehydrogenases (ADH) [1]. Keq for the ethanol oxida- tion reaction ([NADH][acetaldehyde][H+])/([ethanol][NAD+]) erogeneous. In other words, for the operation of ethanol cycle, is as low as 6.92 · 10À12 M, hence the reaction equilibrium is a different redox microenvironment for each reaction must be shifted far towards ethanol synthesis [2]. For the Gram-nega- expected, which in the single compartment of the bacterial cell tive, aerotolerant ethanol producer Zymomonas mobilis, the would imply some kind of enzyme–enzyme interaction and reaction is catalysed by two ADH isoenzymes: the zinc-con- substrate channelling [8,9]. taining ADH I, encoded by adhA, and the iron-containing Although the ethanol cycle hypothesis largely helps to ADH II, encoded by adhB [3–6]. Both of them are NAD+- understand the response of aerobic steady-state culture to per- dependent, and under anaerobic conditions they carry out turbations, it still lacks direct experimental verification. First the rapid and efficient synthesis of ethanol seen in this bacte- of all, it would be necessary to demonstrate that the burst of rium. ethanol oxidation, following the ethanol pulse, does not take place with only one of the ADH isoenzymes present. In partic- ular, the hypothesis proposes that ADH II is the enzyme pri- marily responsible for ethanol oxidation. Studies of this type *Corresponding author. Fax: +371 703 4885. have been hampered by the limited availability of Z. mobilis E-mail address: [email protected] (U. Kalnenieks). knockout mutants of respiratory and fermentative catabolism, obtained by molecular cloning methods. Here, we describe Abbreviations: ADH, alcohol dehydrogenase; E-D, Entner-Doudoroff construction of an ADH II-deficient Z. mobilis strain, with a glycolytic pathway; YETOH, ethanol yield (grams of synthesised etha- kanamycin-resistance gene inserted in the coding region of nol per gram of consumed glucose); Qglucose, specific rate of glucose consumption (millimoles of consumed glucose per gram of dry weight adhB. We show that the response of the recombinant strain per hour) to ethanol pulse indeed dramatically differs from that of the 0014-5793/$32.00 Ó 2006 Federation of European Biochemical Societies. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.febslet.2006.08.034 U. Kalnenieks et al. / FEBS Letters 580 (2006) 5084–5088 5085 was used. The Z. mobilis adhB gene (GenBank accession number A Electron transport chain NADH M15398) was amplified by PCR, using primers Zm1 (CGGAATTCAAAATCGGTAACCACATCTCAATTA) and Zm2 (CGCTGCAGTGGCAAATTATTTATGACGGTAGGC) supplied ADH II by Sigma Genosys; the engineered restriction sites for EcoRI and PstI, respectively, are underlined. PCR reactions were carried out in a Ther- moHybaid gradient thermocycler, using Accuzyme DNA polymerase +NAD+ (Bioline). Purification of the obtained PCR products was done with the QIAquick PCR purification kit, while for the recovery of plasmids Ethanol E-D Acetaldehyde and PCR products from agarose gels the QIAquick gel extraction kit +NADH was used (Qiagen). T4 DNA ligase (Fermentas) was used for ligation. ADH I Restriction, ligation and cloning assays essentially followed standard procedures [12]. All constructs were confirmed by DNA sequencing done by Lark Technologies Inc. 2.3. Continuous cultivation B Electron transport chain NADH Continuous cultivation was carried out in a Labfors fermenter (Inf- ors), of 1 L working volume, at 30 °C, pH 5.5 and 0.25 hÀ1 dilution rate. The growth medium contained 20 g LÀ1 glucose, 5 g LÀ1 yeast ex- ADH II tract and mineral salts, as described previously [10]. Growth was initi- ated under anaerobic conditions, gassing the culture with nitrogen at 0.4 L minÀ1 flow rate. After anaerobic steady-state was reached, aera- tion of the culture was started, and gradually increased, until aerobic +NAD+ steady-state was established, with air flow 2 L minÀ1 and stirring rate ADH II Ethanol E-D Acetaldehyde 550 r.p.m. The pO2 level was not feedback-regulated by either stirring +NADH speed or air flow; however it was maintained remarkably stable by the ADH I steady-state culture itself (see Section 3). 2.4. Analytical methods Alcohol dehydrogenase activity was estimated in the direction of Fig. 1. The ethanol cycle. (A) ADH I catalysing ethanol synthesis, and ethanol oxidation, as described by Neale et al. [4]. The total ADH ADH II catalysing ethanol oxidation; (B) ADH I and part of ADH II activity and the activity of ADH I were measured spectrophotometri- catalysing ethanol synthesis, with part of ADH II catalysing ethanol cally at 340 nm after transfer of an aliquot (10–20 ll) of the cell suspen- oxidation. sion into a cuvette with 1.5 ml of 30 mM Tris/HCl buffer, pH 8.5, containing 1 mM NAD+. Alcohol dehydrogenase isoenzymes were dif- ferentiated according to Kinoshita et al. [3]. For measurement of the parent strain under similar culture conditions, and that in gen- total activity of both isoenzymes, 1 M ethanol was added to the buffer. eral, ADH II-deficiency causes marked alterations of the respi- Discrimination between the two isoenzyme activities was based on the ratory catabolism of Z. mobilis. fact that only ADH I, but not ADH II, could oxidise butanol. For measurement of the ADH I butanol-oxidising activity, which was ta- ken to be half of the ADH I ethanol-oxidising activity, 200 mM buta- nol was added in place of ethanol. ADH II activity was found by 2. Materials and methods subtraction of the estimated ADH I ethanol-oxidising activity from the total ethanol-oxidising activity. 2.1. Bacterial strains, plasmids and transformation Intracellular NADH was determined luminometrically, as described Escherichia coli JM109 and plasmid pGEM-3Zf(+) were purchased previously [11]. Ethanol concentration was determined by gas chroma- from Promega, and the strain JM109 was used as the host strain for tography (Varian). Acetaldehyde was assayed using the alcohol dehy- cloning of recombinant plasmids. Z. mobilis ATCC 29191 (ZM6) drogenase reaction, and glucose was assayed with the glucose oxidase was grown and maintained as described previously [10,11]. Plasmids, method, as described previously [15]. Cell concentration was deter- constructed and used in the present study, are shown in Table 1. mined as optical density at 550 nm, and dry cell mass of the suspen- sions was calculated by reference to a calibration curve. All results E. coli was transformed by the CaCl2 procedure as described by Sam- brook et al. [12]. Z. mobilis was transformed by electroporation [13]. are means of at least three replicates. Standard errors are given in brackets in Table 2.