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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Understanding Control Of Metabolite Dynamics And Heterogeneity, Christopher John Hartline Aug 2022

Understanding Control Of Metabolite Dynamics And Heterogeneity, Christopher John Hartline

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Microbes live in complex and continually changing environments. Rapid shifts in nutrient availability are a common challenge for microbes, and cause changes in intracellular metabolite levels. Microbial response to dynamic environments requires coordination of multiple levels of cellular machinery including gene expression and metabolite concentrations. This coordination is achieved through metabolic control systems, which sense metabolite concentrations and direct cellular activity in response. Several reoccurring control architectures are found throughout diverse metabolic systems, which suggests underlying evolutionary advantages for using these control systems to coordinate metabolism. One common, yet understudied, control architecture is the positive feedback metabolite uptake loop, which …


Quantifying Components Of Protein Translation And Metabolite Heterogeneity In Isogenic Microbial Populations, Alexander Schmitz Dec 2021

Quantifying Components Of Protein Translation And Metabolite Heterogeneity In Isogenic Microbial Populations, Alexander Schmitz

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Cell-to-cell variation in gene expression and metabolite levels have a significant impact on ensemble productivity of microbial bioproduction. New metabolic engineering tools and approaches are needed that consider cell cultures as an amalgam of uniquely behaving individuals to improve the slow commercialization of metabolically engineered systems. Stochastic cellular process including gene expression, metabolism, and growth lead to phenotypic variation between genetically identical cells. Understanding and the ability to control microbial phenotypic variation is key to improving microbial bioproduction metrics. During protein translation, codon usage strongly influences ensemble gene expression but the effect on the variation of gene expression was not …


Metabolic Engineering Of Cyanobacteria For Production Of Chemicals, Po-Cheng Lin Aug 2019

Metabolic Engineering Of Cyanobacteria For Production Of Chemicals, Po-Cheng Lin

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Concerns over the impact of climate change caused by CO2 emission have driven the research and development of renewable energies. Microbial production of chemicals is being viewed as a feasible approach to reduce the use of fossil fuels and minimize the impact of climate change. With recent advances in synthetic biology, microorganisms can be engineered to synthesize petroleum-based chemicals and plant-derived compounds. Cyanobacteria are photosynthetic prokaryotes that use only sunlight, CO2, and trace minerals for growth. Compared to other microbial hosts, cyanobacteria are attractive platforms for sustainable bioproduction, because they can directly convert CO2 into products. However, the major challenge …


Metabolic Engineering Of Cyanobacteria For Production Of Chemicals, Po-Cheng Lin Aug 2019

Metabolic Engineering Of Cyanobacteria For Production Of Chemicals, Po-Cheng Lin

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Concerns over the impact of climate change caused by CO2 emission have driven the research and development of renewable energies. Microbial production of chemicals is being viewed as a feasible approach to reduce the use of fossil fuels and minimize the impact of climate change. With recent advances in synthetic biology, microorganisms can be engineered to synthesize petroleum-based chemicals and plant-derived compounds. Cyanobacteria are photosynthetic prokaryotes that use only sunlight, CO2, and trace minerals for growth. Compared to other microbial hosts, cyanobacteria are attractive platforms for sustainable bioproduction, because they can directly convert CO2 into products. However, the major challenge …


Metabolic Engineering Of Cyanobacteria For Photosynthetic Production Of Drop-In Liquid Fuels, Bertram Michael Berla Dec 2014

Metabolic Engineering Of Cyanobacteria For Photosynthetic Production Of Drop-In Liquid Fuels, Bertram Michael Berla

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Cyanobacteria are oxygenic phototrophs with great potential as hosts for renewable fuel and chemical production. They grow very quickly (compared with plants) and can use sunlight for energy and CO2 as a carbon source (unlike yeast or E. coli). While cyanobacteria have been engineered to make many chemicals that are native and non-native parts of their metabolism, this work is concerned with the production of heptadecane in Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803. Heptadecane is in a class of natural products produced by all cyanobacteria, but in quantities insufficient for industrialization. Towards this future goal, we have built enabling systems for the …