Erratum to: Appl Microbiol Biotechnol (2017)DOI 10.1007/s00253-017-8353-yThe original version of this article inadvertently contained mistake.In the original article, Fig. 1 was incorrect and the corrected Fig. 1 should be shown as:Open image in new windowIn the original article, Fig. 3 was incorrect and the corrected Fig. 3 should be shown as:Open image in new windowIn the original article, Fig. 4 was incorrect and the corrected Fig. 4 should be shown as:Open image in new windowIn the original article, Fig. 5 was incorrect and the corrected Fig. 5 should be shown as:Open image in new windowWe apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused.

•Defatted rice bran could substitute for refined sugars and partial peptone.•Thermal-pretreatment followed by enzymatic hydrolysis retained soluble proteins.•We reported low activity of XylR restricted xylose utilization of L. lactis.•A novel strategy of XylR overexpression followed by adaptive evolution was proposed.•HD medium supported higher nisin yield than sucrose medium.Present investigation explores the potential of defatted rice bran (DRB) serving as sole carbon source and partial nitrogen source to support Lactococcus lactis growth and nisin production. To retain the nutrients in DRB, especially protein fractions, thermal pretreatment followed by enzymatic hydrolysis without washing step was applied for saccharification. A maximum of 45.64 g reducing sugar mainly containing 30.26 g glucose and 5.66 g xylose from 100 g DRB was attained in hydrolysates of DRB (HD). A novel strategy of xylR (xylose transcriptional regulator) overexpression followed by evolutionary engineering was proposed, which significantly increased the capacity of L. lactis to metabolize xylose. Subsequently, RT-PCR results indicated that xylR overexpression stimulated expression of xylose assimilation genes synergistically with exposure to xylose. In HD medium, the highest nisin titer of the engineered strain FEXR was 3824.53 IU/mL, which was 1.37 times of that in sucrose medium by the original strain F44.

Lactococcus lactis is a gram-positive bacterium used extensively in the dairy industry and food fermentation, and its biological characteristics are usually improved through genetic manipulation. However, poor transformation efficiency was the main restriction factor for the construction of engineered strains. In this study, the transformation efficiency of L. lactis F44 showed a 56.1-fold increase in acid condition (pH 5.0); meanwhile, erythromycin stress (0.04 μg/mL) promoted the transformation efficiency more significantly (76.9-fold). Notably, the transformation efficiency of F44e (L. lactis F44 harboring empty pLEB124) increased up to 149.1-fold under the synergistic stresses of acid and erythromycin. In addition, the gene expression of some DNA binding proteins (DprA, RadA, RadC, RecA, RecQ, and SsbA) changed correspondingly. Especially for radA, 25.1-fold improvement was detected when F44e was exposed to pH 5.0. Overexpression of some DNA binding proteins could improve the transformation efficiency. The results suggested that acid or erythromycin stress could improve the transformation efficiency of L. lactis through regulating gene expression of DNA binding proteins. We have proposed a simple but promising strategy for improving the transformation efficiency of L. lactis and other hard-transformed microorganisms.

Glycosylation reactions mainly catalyzed by glycosyltransferases (Gts) occur almost everywhere in the biosphere, and always play crucial roles in vital processes. In order to understand the full potential of Gts, the chemical and structural glycosylation mechanisms are systematically summarized in this review, including some new outlooks in inverting/retaining mechanisms and the overview of GT-C superfamily proteins as a novel Gt fold. Some special features of glycosylation and the evolutionary studies on Gts are also discussed to help us better understand the function and application potential of Gts. Natural product (NP) glycosylation and related Gts which play important roles in new drug development are emphasized in this paper. The recent advances in the glycosylation pattern (particularly the rare C- and S-glycosylation), reversibility, iterative catalysis and protein auxiliary of NP Gts are all summed up comprehensively. This review also presents the application of NP Gts and associated studies on synthetic biology, which may further broaden the mind and bring wider application prospects.

In this study, polyurethane foam (PUF) was chemically treated to immobilize Streptomyces thermotolerans 11432 for semi-continuous production of acetylisovaleryltylosin (AIV). Based on experimental results, positive cross-linked PUF (PCPUF) was selected as the most effective carrier according to immobilized cell mass. The effect of adsorption time on immobilized mass was investigated. AIV concentration (33.54 mg/l) in batch fermentations with immobilized cells was higher than with free cells (20.34 mg/l). In repeated batch fermentations with immobilized S. thermotolerans 11432 using PCPUF cubes, high AIV concentrations and conversion rates were attained, ranging from 25.56 to 34.37 mg/l and 79.93 to 86.31 %, respectively. Significantly, this method provides a feasible strategy for efficient AIV production and offers the potential for large-scale production.

Phosphate-solubilizing bacteria (PSB) were isolated and characterized from the rhizosphere and bulk soils of Areca catechu plants. A long history of phosphate fertilizer use has elicited a direct effect on the incidence of soil PSB. Their abundance and ability to solubilize insoluble phosphate were significantly greater (P < 0.0001) in soils with low available phosphorus (P) content than in other soil types. Three efficient PSB strains, namely, ASL12, ASG34, and ADH302, were identified as Acinetobacter pittii, Escherichia coli, and Enterobacter cloacae by characterizing 16S rRNA sequences and biochemical characteristics; they produced gluconic acid at concentrations of 7862.4, 4306.5, and 2663.8 mg L−1, respectively. The highest amount of solubilized P was determined in Pikovskaya (PVK) medium for the bacterial strain ASL12. The secretion of gluconic acid was related to the available P of rhizosphere soils and P solubilization. Under shaded conditions, the application of these three strains significantly improved plant height, shoot and root dry weight, and nutrient uptake of A. catechu seedlings. A further increase in P solubilization was observed by co-inoculating the three strains and also applying tricalcium phosphate (TCP) or aluminum phosphate (AP). A significant (P < 0.05) correlation was also observed between P-solubilization activity and A. catechu plant growth in pot experiments. Thus, the three strains can be potentially applied as inoculants in tropical and aluminum-rich soils.

Catalyzed by a family of enzymes called glycosyltransferases, glycosylation reactions are essential for the bioactivities of secondary metabolites such as antibiotics. Due to the special characters of antibiotic glycosyltransferases (AGts), antibiotics can function by attaching some unusual deoxy-sugars to their aglycons. Comprehensive similarity searches on the amino acid sequences of AGts have been performed. We reconstructed the molecular phylogeny of AGts with neighbor-joining, maximum-likelihood, and Bayesian methods of phylogenetic inference. The phylogenetic trees show a distinct separation of polyene macrolide (PEM) AGts and other polyketide AGts. The former are more like eukaryotic glycosyltransferases and were deduced to be the results of horizontal gene transfer from eukaryotes. Protein tertiary structural comparison also indicated that some glycopeptide AGts (Gtf-proteins) have a close evolutionary relationship with MurGs, essential glycosyltransferases involved in maturation of bacterial cell walls. The evolutionary relationship of glycopeptide antibiotic biosynthetic gene clusters was speculated according to the phylogenetic analysis of Gtf-proteins. Considering the fact that polyketide AGts and Gtf-proteins are all GT Family 1 members and their aglycon acceptor biosynthetic patterns are very similar, we deduced that AGts and the synthases of their aglycon acceptors have some evolutionary relevance. Finally, the evolutionary origins of AGts that do not fall into GT Family 1 are discussed, suggesting that their ancestral proteins appear to be derived from various proteins responsible for primary metabolism.

Nisin has been widely used in the food industry as a safe and natural preservative to increase the shelf time of many foods. In this study, genome shuffling was applied to improve nisin Z production of Lactococcus lactis ssp. lactis YF11 (YF11) via recursive protoplast fusion. Ultraviolet irradiation and diethyl sulfate mutagenesis were used to generate parental strains for genome shuffling. After 4 rounds of genome shuffling, the best-performing strain F44 was obtained, which showed dramatic improvements in tolerance to both glucose (ranging from 8 to 15% (wt/vol) and nisin (ranging from 5,000 to 14,000 IU/mL). Fed-batch fermentation showed that the nisin titer of F44 was up to 4,023 IU/mL, which was 2.4 times that of the starting strain YF11. Field emission scanning electron microscope micrographs of YF11 and F44 revealed the apparent differences in cell morphology. Whereas YF11 displayed long and thin cell morphology, F44 cells were short and thick and with a raised surface in the middle of the cell. With the increasing glucose and nisin content in the medium, cells of both YF11 and F44 tended to become shrunken; however, alterations in YF11 cells were more pronounced than those of F44 cells, especially when cultured in tolerance medium containing both nisin and glucose. Nuclear magnetic resonance analysis demonstrated that the structure of nisin from YF11 and F44 was the same. Expression profiling of nisin synthesis related genes by real-time quantitative PCR showed that the transcription level of nisin structural gene nisZ and immunity gene nisI of F44 was 48 and 130% higher than that of the starting strain YF11, respectively. These results could provide valuable insights into the molecular basis underlying the nisin overproduction mechanism in L. lactis, thus facilitating the future construction of industrial strains for nisin production.

Low temperature alkali (LTA) pretreatment and high temperature acid (HTA) pretreatment methods were applied to spent mushroom substrate (SMS) for providing comparative performance data on the enhancement of enzymatic saccharification and the change of composition and structure. LTA pretreatment contributed to higher lignin removal (67.6%) and enzymatic digestibility (85.6%) during enzymatic hydrolysis, while HTA pretreatment resulted in higher hemicellulose reduction (85.3%) but lower enzymatic digestibility (43.5%). The physical structure was destroyed at certain degree and changes in cellulose crystallinity occurred after both LTA and HTA pretreatments. Besides, the effect of lignin reduction in alkali pretreatment on glucose yield was studied. These results indicated that LTA pretreatment had the potential to be developed into a cost effective process for producing bioproducts from lignocellulosic materials.

Antibiotic glycosyltransferases (AGts) attach unusual deoxy-sugars to aglycons so antibiotics can exert function. It has been reported that polyene macrolide (PEM) AGts have different evolutionary origin when compared with other polyketide AGts, and our previous analysis have suggested that they could be results of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) from eukaryotes. In this paper, we compared the structures of PEM AGts with structures of eukaryotes and other AGts, and then built models of the representative PEM AGts and GT-1 glycosyltransferases. We also constructed the Neighbor-Joining (NJ) trees based on the normalized Root Mean Square (RMS) distance, the Bayesian tree guided by structural alignments, and carried out analysis on several key conserved residues in PEM AGts. The NJ tree showed a close relationship between PEM AGts and eukaryotic glycosyltransferases, and Bayesian tree further supported their affinity with UDP-glucuronosyltransferases (UGTs). Analysis on key conserved residues showed that PEM AGts may have similar interaction mechanism such as in the formation of hydrogen bonds as eukaryotic glycosyltransferases. Using structure-based phylogenetic approaches, this study further supported that PEM AGts were the result of HGT between prokaryotes and eukaryotes.Highlights► Polyene macrolide glycosyltransferases are the result of horizontal gene transfer. ► All the phylograms support close evolutionary relationships with eukaryotes. ► Polyene macrolide glycosyltransferases have similar key residues with eukaryotes. ► Distances between alpha carbons of structures were calculated to build phylogeny.

Glycosylation reactions mainly catalyzed by glycosyltransferases (Gts) occur almost everywhere in the biosphere, and always play crucial roles in vital processes. In order to understand the full potential of Gts, the chemical and structural glycosylation mechanisms are systematically summarized in this review, including some new outlooks in inverting/retaining mechanisms and the overview of GT-C superfamily proteins as a novel Gt fold. Some special features of glycosylation and the evolutionary studies on Gts are also discussed to help us better understand the function and application potential of Gts. Natural product (NP) glycosylation and related Gts which play important roles in new drug development are emphasized in this paper. The recent advances in the glycosylation pattern (particularly the rare C- and S-glycosylation), reversibility, iterative catalysis and protein auxiliary of NP Gts are all summed up comprehensively. This review also presents the application of NP Gts and associated studies on synthetic biology, which may further broaden the mind and bring wider application prospects.