HUMAN GUT MICROBIOME-DERIVED BIOSYNTHETIC ENZYMES FOR PRODUCTION OF FATTY ACID AMIDES
Disclosed herein, in some embodiments, are vectors encoding biosynthetic enzymes from gut microbiome-derived bacterium (e.g., Clostridia enzymes), engineered cells comprising the vectors, and methods of using biosynthetic enzymes from gut microbiome-derived bacterium (e.g., Clostridia enzymes) to produce fatty acid amides.
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This application is a divisional of U.S. Pat. Application No. 16/812,196, filed Mar. 6, 2020, and entitled “Human Gut Microbiome-Derived Biosynthetic Enzymes for Production of Fatty Acid Amides,” which claims priority under 35 U.S.C. § 119(e) to U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/816,021, filed Mar. 8, 2019, and entitled “Human Gut Microbiome-Derived Biosynthetic Enzymes for Production of Fatty Acid Amides,” each of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety for all purposes.
GOVERNMENT SUPPORTThis invention was made with government support under HR0011-15-C-0084 awarded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The government has certain rights in the invention.
REFERENCE TO AN ELECTRONIC SEQUENCE LISTINGThe contents of the electronic sequence listing (M065670462US02-SUBSEQ-HCL.xml; Size: 258,597 bytes; and Date of Creation: Aug. 15, 2022) is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTIONFatty acid amides (FAAs) represent a class of compounds produced by humans and other mammals that have been implicated as important signaling molecules.1 FAAs comprise a hydrophobic acyl tail group and a head group and these groups may contribute to the bioactivity of FAAs.2 The first FAA identified was arachidonoyl ethanolamide (anandamide), a linear hydrophobic FAA that activates the CB1 and CB2 endocannabinoid G protein coupled receptors (GPCRs).3 It is present at low levels with short half-life due to hydrolysis by the enzyme fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH).4 Nonetheless, it has been suggested to induce motivation and pleasure via CB1 activation,3 suppress immune function via CB2 activation,5 and promote obesity via an unknown mechanism.6 Since then, a second family of FAAs has been found with fatty acids linked to monoamine neurotransmitters. One member is oleoyl dopamine, a nanomolar activator of vanilloid receptor 1 involved in sensing pain,7 which has also been proposed to act via other mechanisms including CB1 agonism,7 FAAH antagonism,7 calcium channel antagonism,8 glucose homeostasis receptor agonism,9 dopamine transporter antagonism,10 and a as general carrier of dopamine across the blood-brain barrier.11 Other examples include docosahexaenoyl serotonin that attenuates cytokine production12 and arachidonoyl γ-aminobutryic acid (GABA) that suppresses pain and motor activity in mice via an uncharacterized mechanism.13 Moreover, a third family of FAAs with amino acid conjugates is known, and includes arachidonoyl serine which shows vascular modulation activity via interaction with a noncannabinoid GPCR receptor.14 Although the primary biological roles for these FAAs are still largely left for investigation, they have been shown to target diverse molecular targets to control various physiopathological conditions. Given the diverse molecular targets of FAAs, efficient and high throughput methods of producing FAAs are needed.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTIONAspects of the present disclosure relate to methods of producing fatty acid amides, comprising contacting a composition, comprising one or more exogenous fatty acids and one or more amines, with a set of biosynthetic enzymes which are human gut microbiome-derived clostridia biosynthetic enzymes in an effective amount to produce a fatty acid amide.
In some embodiments, the biosynthetic enzymes comprise a fatty-acyl transferase. In some embodiments, the biosynthetic enzymes comprise an acyl carrier protein (ACP). In some embodiments, the biosynthetic enzymes comprise a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase. In some embodiments, the method is performed in vitro. In some embodiments, the composition is a culture broth. In some embodiments, the set of biosynthetic enzymes are isolated from human gut microbiome-derived clostridia. In some embodiments, the method further comprises isolating acyl carrier protein from a human gut microbiome-derived clostridia. In some embodiments, the biosynthetic enzymes comprise a hydrolase. In some embodiments, the biosynthetic enzymes comprise a lipid transfer protein. In some embodiments, the biosynthetic enzymes comprise a glycosyltransferase.
In some embodiments, the set of biosynthetic enzymes are synthetic proteins. In some embodiments, the set of biosynthetic enzymes are recombinant proteins expressed from one or more vectors. In some embodiments, the set of biosynthetic enzymes are recombinant proteins expressed from a vector comprising a single operon, wherein the operon comprises genes encoding at least a fatty acyl transferase, an acyl carrier protein, and a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase. In some embodiments, the set of biosynthetic enzymes are recombinant proteins expressed from a plurality of vectors comprising a first vector, a second vector, and a third vector, wherein each of the plurality of vectors comprises a gene in a single operon and under the control of a regulatory element.
In some embodiments, the one or more exogenous fatty acids are selected from a group consisting of acetic acid, propionic acid, butyric acid, valeric acid, hexanoic acid, octanoic acid, capric acid, lauric acid, myristic acid, pentadecanoic acid, palmitic acid, stearic acid, arachidic acid, iso-pentadecanoic acid, palmitoleic acid, oleic acid, vaccenic acid, linoleic acid, γ-linolenic acid, α-linolenic acid, dihomo-γ-linolenic acid, arachidonic acid, eicosapentaenoic acid, docosapentaenoic acid, docosahexaenoic acid, 8-methyl-6-nonenoic acid, octynoic acid, myristic acid alkyne, and palmitic acid alkyne.
In some embodiments, the one or more exogenous amines are selected from a group consisting of phenylalanine, tryptophan, tyrosine, histidine, lysine, glycine, alanine, valine, leucine, isoleucine, methionine, proline, serine, threonine, cysteine, asparagine, glutamine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, arginine, ornithine, β-alanine, L-DOPA, creatine, citrulline, phenylacetylglutamine, phenylethylamine, tryptamine, tyramine, histamine, serotonin, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, γ-aminobutryic acid (GABA), aminovaleric acid, ethanolamine, cadaverine, putrescine, spermine, spermidine, agmatine, propylamine, butylamine, dimethylamine, pyrollidine, piperidine, homocysteine, cysteamine, homocysteamine, taurine, hypotaurine, glutathione, octopamine, 3-iodothyronamine, melatonin, and vanillylamide.
Further aspects of the present disclosure relate to methods of producing a fatty acid amide, comprising: (i) administering to a host a plurality of vectors comprising a first vector, a second vector, and a third vector, wherein each of the plurality of vectors comprises a human gut microbiome-derived bacterium gene under the control of a regulatory element; and wherein the gene on the first vector, the second vector and the third vector encode a fatty acyl transferase, an acyl carrier protein, and fatty acyl-ACP synthetase, respectively; and (ii) contacting the host with a composition in an effective amount to produce a fatty acid amide in the host.
In some embodiments, the composition is a culture broth. In some embodiments, the gene is in a single operon. In some embodiments, the regulatory element is an inducible promoter, optionally wherein the inducible promoter is an IPTG-inducible promoter. In some embodiments, the regulatory element is a constitutive promoter. In some embodiments, the regulatory element is a repressible promoter, optionally, wherein the repressible promoter comprises a lac operon. In some embodiments, the regulatory element comprises a T7 promoter. In some embodiments, the method further comprises administering a vector encoding T7 RNA polymerase. In some embodiments, the vector further comprises a ribosomal binding site. In some embodiments, at least one gene is codon-optimized. In some embodiments, the gene is an open reading frame. In some embodiments, the host is an E. coli. In some embodiments, the gut microbiome-derived bacterium is from Clostridia. In some embodiments, the gene is codon-optimized for production in E. coli.
In some embodiments, the fatty acid amide is palmitoleyl-putrescine, oleoyl aminovaleric acid, α-linolenoyl aminovaleric acid, oleoyl γ-aminobutyric acid, oleoyl dopamine, oleoyl tyramine, palmitoleoyl dopamine, α-linolenoyl tyramine, oleoyl phenethylamine, lauroyl tyrptamine, lineoleoyl tryptamine, lauroyl tyramine, α-linolenoyl homocysteine, oleoyl homocysteine, α-linolenoyl cysteine, linoleoyl homocysteine, oleoyl-aminopentanoic acid, or α-linolenoyl homocysteamine.
In some embodiments, the plurality of vectors further comprises a vector having a gene encoding Sfp 4′-phosphopantetheinyl transferase. In some embodiments, the first vector, the second vector, or the third vector further comprises a gene encoding Sfp 4′-phosphopantetheinyl transferase.
In some embodiments, the composition does not comprise an exogenous fatty acid. In some embodiments, the composition does not comprise an exogenous amine. In some embodiments, the composition comprises one or more exogenous fatty acids selected from a group consisting of acetic acid, propionic acid, butyric acid, valeric acid, hexanoic acid, octanoic acid, capric acid, lauric acid, myristic acid, pentadecanoic acid, palmitic acid, stearic acid, arachidic acid, iso-pentadecanoic acid, palmitoleic acid, oleic acid, vaccenic acid, linoleic acid, γ-linolenic acid, α-linolenic acid, dihomo-γ-linolenic acid, arachidonic acid, eicosapentaenoic acid, docosapentaenoic acid, docosahexaenoic acid, 8-methyl-6-nonenoic acid, octynoic acid, myristic acid alkyne, and palmitic acid alkyne.
In some embodiments, the composition comprises one or more exogenous amines selected from a group consisting of phenylalanine, tryptophan, tyrosine, histidine, lysine, glycine, alanine, valine, leucine, isoleucine, methionine, proline, serine, threonine, cysteine, asparagine, glutamine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, arginine, ornithine, β-alanine, L-DOPA, creatine, citrulline, phenylacetylglutamine, phenylethylamine, tryptamine, tyramine, histamine, serotonin, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, γ-aminobutryic acid (GABA), aminovaleric acid, ethanolamine, cadaverine, putrescine, spermine, spermidine, agmatine, propylamine, butylamine, dimethylamine, pyrollidine, piperidine, homocysteine, cysteamine, homocysteamine, taurine, hypotaurine, glutathione, octopamine, 3-iodothyronamine, melatonin, and vanillylamide.
Further aspects of the present disclosure provide vectors for the production of fatty acid amides, comprising genes, wherein each of the genes is under the control of a regulatory element, wherein each of the genes is derived from gut microbiome-derived bacterium, and wherein the genes encode at least a fatty acyl transferase, an acyl carrier protein, and a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase. In some embodiments, the regulatory element is an inducible promoter. In some embodiments, the regulatory element is a constitutive promoter. In some embodiments, the regulatory element is a repressible promoter. In some embodiments, the regulatory element comprises a T7 promoter. In some embodiments, the vector further encodes a T7 RNA polymerase. In some embodiments, the vector further comprises a ribosomal binding site.
In some embodiments, the genes are codon-optimized. In some embodiments, the genes are open reading frames. In some embodiments, the genes are codon-optimized for production in E. coli. In some embodiments, the gut microbiome-derived bacterium is from Clostridia. In some embodiments, the genes also encode a hydrolase. In some embodiments, the genes also encode a lipid transfer protein. In some embodiments, the genes also encode a glycosyltransferase. In some embodiments, the genes encode Sfp 4′-phosphopantetheinyl transferase. In some embodiments, the genes are in a single operon.
Further aspects of the present disclosure provide methods of producing a fatty acid amide comprising: (i) administering to a host a vector comprising genes, wherein each of the genes is under the control of a regulatory element, wherein each of the genes is derived from a human gut microbiome-derived bacterium, and wherein the genes encode a fatty acyl transferase, an acyl carrier protein, and fatty acyl-ACP synthetase; and (ii) contacting the host with a composition in an effective amount to produce a fatty acid amide in the host.
In some embodiments, the composition is a culture broth. In some embodiments, the regulatory element is an inducible promoter. In some embodiments, the regulatory element is a constitutive promoter. In some embodiments, the regulatory element is a repressible promoter. In some embodiments, the regulatory element is a T7 promoter. In some embodiments, the vector further encodes a T7 RNA polymerase. In some embodiments, the vector further comprises a ribosomal binding site. In some embodiments, wherein the genes are codon-optimized. In some embodiments, the genes are open reading frames. In some embodiments, the host is E. coli. In some embodiments, the gut microbiome-derived bacterium is from Clostridia. In some embodiments, the genes are codon-optimized for production in E. coli.
In some embodiments, the fatty acid amide is palmitoleyl-putrescine, oleoyl aminovaleric acid, α-linolenoyl aminovaleric acid, oleoyl γ-aminobutyric acid, oleoyl dopamine, oleoyl tyramine, palmitoleoyl dopamine, α-linolenoyl tyramine, oleoyl phenethylamine, lauroyl tyrptamine, lineoleoyl tryptamine, lauroyl tyramine, α-linolenoyl homocysteine, oleoyl homocysteine, α-linolenoyl cysteine, linoleoyl homocysteine, oleoyl-aminopentanoic acid, or α-linolenoyl homocysteamine.
In some embodiments, the genes further comprise a gene encoding Sfp 4′-phosphopantetheinyl transferase. In some embodiments, the genes are in a single operon. In some embodiments, the composition does not comprise an exogenous fatty acid. In some embodiments, the composition does not comprise an exogenous amine.
In some embodiments, the composition comprises one or more exogenous fatty acids selected from a group consisting of acetic acid, propionic acid, butyric acid, valeric acid, hexanoic acid, octanoic acid, capric acid, lauric acid, myristic acid, pentadecanoic acid, palmitic acid, stearic acid, arachidic acid, iso-pentadecanoic acid, palmitoleic acid, oleic acid, vaccenic acid, linoleic acid, γ-linolenic acid, α-linolenic acid, dihomo-γ-linolenic acid, arachidonic acid, eicosapentaenoic acid, docosapentaenoic acid, docosahexaenoic acid, 8-methyl-6-nonenoic acid, octynoic acid, myristic acid alkyne, and palmitic acid alkyne.
In some embodiments, the composition comprises one or more exogenous amines selected from a group consisting of phenylalanine, tryptophan, tyrosine, histidine, lysine, glycine, alanine, valine, leucine, isoleucine, methionine, proline, serine, threonine, cysteine, asparagine, glutamine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, arginine, ornithine, β-alanine, L-DOPA, creatine, citrulline, phenylacetylglutamine, phenylethylamine, tryptamine, tyramine, histamine, serotonin, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, γ-aminobutryic acid (GABA), aminovaleric acid, ethanolamine, cadaverine, putrescine, spermine, spermidine, agmatine, propylamine, butylamine, dimethylamine, pyrollidine, piperidine, homocysteine, cysteamine, homocysteamine, taurine, hypotaurine, glutathione, octopamine, 3-iodothyronamine, melatonin, and vanillylamide.
Further aspects of the present disclosure relate to engineered cells comprising any of the vectors described herein.
Further aspects of the present disclosure relate to methods of producing fatty acid amides, the method comprising: contacting a composition, comprising one or more exogenous fatty acids and one or more amines, with a set of biosynthetic enzymes which are human gut microbiome-derived clostridia biosynthetic enzymes in an effective amount to produce a fatty acid amide, wherein the set of biosynthetic enzymes comprise a fatty acyl transferase, an acyl carrier protein, and a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase.
The details of one or more embodiments of the invention are set forth in the description below. Other features or advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the following drawings and detailed description of several embodiments, and also from the appended claims.
The following drawings form part of the present specification and are included to further demonstrate certain aspects of the present disclosure, which can be better understood by reference to one or more of these drawings in combination with the detailed description of specific embodiments presented herein. For purposes of clarity, not every component may be labeled in every drawing. It is to be understood that the data illustrated in the drawings in no way limit the scope of the disclosure. In the drawings:
Fatty acid amides comprise a diverse class of organic compounds and have been implicated as neuromodulatory lipids and as regulators of human physiopathological conditions. Production of fatty acid amides, however, using conventional laboratory host cells often has low yield. For example, in laboratory strains of E. coli, exogenous fatty acids are often converted into fatty acyl-CoAs, which are rapidly degraded and rebuilt by E. coli’s fatty acid biosynthesis machinery (FASII) into their endogenous pool of fatty acyl-ACPs. Without being bound by a particular theory, in E. coli, the endogenous fatty acyl-transferase enzyme that conducts the lipidation of these molecules does not use free fatty acid as its substrate, but instead uses a fatty acid conjugated onto either coenzyme A (fatty acyl-CoA) or acyl carrier protein (fatty acyl-ACP). Therefore, when a foreign biosynthetic pathway comprising a fatty acyl-transferse is expressed in E. coli, the addition of an exogenous fatty acid in the culture broth generally does not lead to the incorporation of the desired fatty acid onto the final product, but rather a fatty acid that is endogenously made by the host.
This disclosure is premised, at least in part, on the unexpected finding that host cells may be engineered to efficiently produce fatty acid amides from free fatty acids. Accordingly, provided herein, in some embodiments, are vectors encoding biosynthetic enzymes derived from gut microbiome bacteria, engineered cells comprising the same, and methods of using biosynthetic enzymes derived from gut microbiome bacteria to produce fatty acid amides. Biosynthetic enzymes are enzymes that are capable of promoting synthesis of organic compounds and include fatty acyl-transferase, acyl carrier protein (ACP), fatty acyl-ACP synthetase, hydrolases, lipid transfer proteins, and glycosyltransferases. In some instances, a biosynthetic enzyme is a metabolic enzyme.
Fatty acid amides (FAAs) comprise a hydrophobic acyl tail group and a head group and are formed from a fatty acid and an amine. Non-limiting examples of fatty acid amides include oleoyl aminovaleric acid, α-linolenoyl aminovaleric acid, oleoyl γ-aminobutyric acid, oleoyl dopamine, oleoyl tyramine, palmitoleoyl dopamine, α-linolenoyl tyramine, oleoyl phenethylamine, lauroyl tyrptamine, lineoleoyl tryptamine, lauroyl tyramine, α-linolenoyl homocysteine, oleoyl homocysteine, α-linolenoyl cysteine, linoleoyl homocysteine, oleoyl-aminopentanoic acid, palmitoleyl-putrescine, and α-linolenoyl homocysteamine. FAAs produced by humans include arachidonoyl γ-aminobutryic acid, oleoyl dopamine, docosahexaenoyl serotonin, and arachidonoyl serine. See also,
Other than human cells, the human gut microbiome can likewise produce diffusible metabolites that interact with human cellular targets to modulate human signaling pathways. 15,16 For example, a phenotypic assay of DNA damage-inducing Escherichia coli or colitis-inducing Klebsiella oxytoca led to discovery of pathway responsible for the production of the compounds colibactin17,18 and tilivalline,19 respectively. Human microbiome sequencing studies show that, while healthy individuals differ remarkably in the bacterial strains that constitute the microbiome at a taxonomical level, the metabolic pathways remain fairly constant.20 Taxonomical identification of the human microbiota is therefore not sufficient in associating them with different health states. Elucidating the chemical modulators and connecting them back to specific bacterial genes provide the means to glean functional outputs from DNA sequencing data and ultimately control the underlying mechanisms by therapeutic interventions.
A forward genetics-based approach, like phenotypic assay, has been instrumental in compound discovery, but it is intrinsically designed to be characterized one molecule or bacterial strain at a time. Alternatively, metabolites can be elucidated in a reverse genetics-based manner by bioinformatically mining putative compound-encoding biosynthetic pathways from DNA sequencing data. As an example, a focused search on biosynthetic genes encoding the N-acyl synthase protein domain (PF13444), followed by E. coli heterologous expression of representative genes, led to the isolation of FAAs that modulate human health by structurally mimicking human endogenous FAAs, primarily of the amino acid conjugate type from Gram-negative gut commensal bacteria.21 A more generalized computational search using a detection algorithm (antiSMASH)22 based on pattern recognition from known pathways identified 14,000 putative pathways from microbiome sequencing data, select groups of which have been characterized to produce compound classes, like lactocillin-based antibiotics23 and peptide aldehyde-based protease inhibitors.24 Without being bound by a particular theory, sequence-based methods provide the means to leverage the growing number of available genomic datasets to identify large unexplored groups of pathways that are likely to produce compounds significant in the human gut and systematically characterize them en masse.
Putative pathways identified from sequence data have largely been characterized in vivo by fermentation of the pathway-harboring native or heterologous bacterial strain in laboratory media. However, such laboratory in vivo systems often fail to elucidate pathways that rely on substrates that are absent from or found in insufficient levels in the host strain or culture broth, including bacterial pathways that convert bile acids endogenously produced by human liver cells into more cytotoxic secondary bile acids, like deoxycholic acid and lithocholic acid.25 The human gut lumen contains a complex mixture of metabolites from gut microbes, human cells, and dietary intake, which is difficult to recapitulate in vivo. On the other hand, pathways can be investigated with precise control of substrates and enzymes by in vitro reconstitution, like the characterization of colibactin biosynthesis.26 However, this requires a priori biochemical knowledge of the pathways to predict the substrates and enzymatic conditions, which are often lacking for pathways gleaned from sequence data.
One natural product superclass that is widely used by bacteria is the nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) class.27 NRPS is known to produce peptide-based compounds of various structures (e.g. cyclic, D-amino acids) and bioactivities (e.g. antibiotics, immunosuppressants). The biosynthetic machinery consists of multiple modules, each of which is generally responsible for incorporating a specific amino acid subunit. The minimal module contains three protein domains: a carrier protein or thiolation domain (T; PF00550) that requires a 4′-phospho-pantetheine (PPT) arm, added by a separate PPTase (e.g. Sfp);28 an adenylation domain (A; PF00501) that uses ATP to load a specific amino acid onto the T domain to form aminoacyl-T thiotemplated intermediate; and a condensation domain (C; PF00668) that catalyzes amide bond formation between the upstream and downstream aminoacyl-T to generate peptidyl-T thiotemplated intermediate. A termination domain then releases the elongated peptidyl-T from the machinery to form the final product. The chemical ecology in various habitats evolutionarily subjects the bacteria to produce unique secondary metabolites made by specialized NRPS machineries, such as the iterative module of gut E. coli enterobactin biosynthesis29 and the bisintercalator loading domain of marine Micromonospora thiocoraline biosynthesis.30
As described herein, in some embodiments, genome mining was coupled with in vitro reconstitution to characterize a group of noncanonical NRPS-like pathways from the Gram-positive human gut Clostridia. Putative biosynthetic pathways were computationally detected from publically available human-associated bacterial genomes, and further mapped with metagenomic and metatranscriptomic reads from human gut samples of the Human Microbiome Project to identify eight unprecedented NRPS-like pathways that are ubiquitously present and actively transcribed in the human gut.
Each of the three conserved biosynthetic genes encodes for exactly one protein domain (C, T, or A) that together constitute the NRPS minimal module. Surprisingly, E. coli heterologous expression resulted in the production of a FAA. By in vitro reconstitution of the pathway, the C domain was found to load an exogenous fatty acid, instead of an amino acid as predicted from conventional NRPS enzymology, onto the T domain. Furthermore, contrary to NRPS C domain that catalyzes the conjugation of two thiotemplated substrates,31 this pathway’s C domain was characterized to conjugate a thiotemplated fatty acid with a free amine, providing the flexibility to incorporate monoamine neurotransmitter as substrate. Without being bound by a particular theory, because the FAA isolated from E. coli was found to be an artifact, the pathways were screened for their preferred substrates with a panel of bacteria-, human-, and food-derived fatty acids and amines known to be abundant in the human gut, resulting in the characterization of four major neurotransmitter conjugate FAA products. In some instances, the chemical structures of the gut Clostridia FAAs are either identical or otherwise homologous to known human FAAs, making them likely to interact with similar human endogenous cellular targets involved in various signaling pathways and serve as a way to modulate human health.
Without being bound by a particular theory, genome mining across multiple sequencing datasets serves as an effective approach for the systematic discovery of human microbiome-derived chemical effectors that scales with the exponential growth of publically available sequence data with minimal prior knowledge.53 However, the conventional method for sequence-to-compound production relies on heterologous expression, which may fail due to the lack of proper substrates in the heterologous host’s metabolic pool.54 Coupling of sequence mining with in vitro substrate panel screening to analyze enzyme activity with defined substrates to systematically characterize human gut microbiome-derived biosynthetic pathways encoding for chemical compounds is described herein. Without being bound by a particular theory, this allowed for the characterization of the highly abundant and actively transcribed gut Clostridia NRPS-like pathways that preferentially incorporated substrates abundant in the human gut that may not be readily available in conventional laboratory host strains and culture media. Lauric acid and α-linolenic acid are examples of such substrates, found mostly in plants as part of human diet.55 Although oleic acid occurs naturally across diverse biological systems, the fact that it is the most abundant fatty acid in human adipose tissue56 suggests that Clostridia pathways have also likely incorporated fatty acids from the human gut lumen. For the amine substrates, dopamine, tyramine, tryptamine, and aminovaleric acid may be absent from or found in insufficient levels in E. coli host strains, but are found endogenously in humans, as well as secreted by gut commensal bacteria. 57 Thus, instead of encoding for substrate biosynthesis, the FAA pathways encode a mechanism to incorporate substrates from the host, a phenomenon that has been observed for known biosynthetic pathways in symbiotic systems.58
The Clostridia pathways were characterized to produce four major compounds of the FAA type, the same class of signaling molecules produced by human cells to interact with various signaling pathways involved in human health (
The human gut is referred to as the “second brain” because of the multitude of neurons, otherwise called the enteric nervous system, that embed the walls of the gastrointestinal tract.59 Neurotransmitters within the gut have been investigated to interact with these receptors to not only influence host neurological, but also immune, metabolic, and vasculature states.60 The known human endogenous FAAs have also been suggested to interact with these receptors to modulate conditions, such as pain, mood, inflammation, and obesity.61 Considering the structural mimicry, these Clostridia-derived FAAs are likely the missing chemical link that enables human gut Clostridia to interact with a diverse set of host signaling pathways to influence a variety of physiopathological conditions. The systematic elucidation of these functional outputs will ultimately allow for the deterministic manipulation of these chemical modulators and their targets as an effective mode for human microbiome-based therapy.
Reference numbers in the preceding section correspond to those listed in Reference Section 1.
Gut Microbiome BacteriumAny of the biosynthetic enzymes (e.g., fatty acyl-transferase, acyl carrier protein (ACP), fatty acyl-ACP synthetase, hydrolases, lipid transfer proteins, and glycosyltransferases) described herein may be derived from a gut microbiome bacterium. A human gut microbiome bacterium is a bacterium that is found in the gastrointestinal tract of a human.
The gut microbiome bacterium may be from any species. For example, the gut microbiome bacterium may be Bacteroides spp., Enterococcus spp., Escherichia spp., Enterobacter spp., Klebsiella spp., Bifidobacterium spp., Staphylococcus spp., Lactobacillus, Clostridium spp., Proteus spp., Pseudomonas spp., Coprococcus spp., Lachnoclostridum spp., Eubacterium spp., Salmonella spp., Faecalibacterium spp., Peptostreptococcus spp., or Peptococcus spp. See also, e.g., Lloyd-Price Nature. 2017 Oct 5;550(7674):61-66.
In some instances, a biosynthetic enzyme is a human gut microbiome-derived Clostridia enzyme. Clostridia comprise a class of anaerobic bacteria that are polyphyletic. Non-limiting orders of Clostridia include Clostridiales, Halanaerobiales, Natranaerobiales, Thermoanaerobacteriales, and Negativicutes. Genera of Clostridia include Coprococcus, Marvinbryantia, Lachnoclostridum, Blautia, Ruminococcaceae, Eubacterium, and Clostridium. For example, a biosynthetic enzyme may be derived from Coprococcus eutactus, Marvinbryantia formatexigens, Lachnoclostridium clostridioforme, Blautia producta, Rumiococcaceae bacterium, Clostridiales sp., Eubacterium rectale, or Clostridium celatum. Non-limiting examples of human gut-associated bacteria include Bacteroides fragilis NCTC 9343, Bacteroides fragilis YCH46, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron VPI-5482, Bifidobacterium longum NCC2705, Enterococcus faecalis V583, Escherichia coli sv. O6—K15—H31 536, Escherichia coli O157:H7 EDL933 (EHEC), Escherichia coli O157:H7 Sakai (EHEC), Escherichia coli UTI89 (UPEC), Helicobacter hepaticus 3B1, ATCC 51449, Helicobacter pylori 26695, Helicobacter pylori HPAG1, Helicobacter pylori J99, Lactobacillus acidophilus NCFM, Lactobacillus delbrueckii bulgaricus sv. E Lb14, Lactobacillus johnsonii NCC 533, Lactobacillus salivarius salivarius UCC118, Lawsonia intracellularis PHE/MN1-00, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 1/2a EGD-e, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 4b F2365, Porphyromonas gingivalis W83, Vibrio cholerae sv. O1 bv. El Tor N16961, Campylobacter jejuni jejuni HB93-13, Campylobacter upsaliensis RM3195, Escherichia coli O148:H28 B7A (CS6:LT+:ST+)(ETEC), Escherichia coli O111:H9 E110019 (EPEC), Escherichia coli O139:H28 F11 (ETEC), Listeria monocytogenes sv. 1/2a F6854, Listeria monocytogenes 4b H7858, Yersinia bercovieri ATCC 43970, Bifidobacterium adolescentis ATCC 15703, Lactobacillus brevis ATCC 367, Lactobacillus casei ATCC 334, Lactobacillus delbrueckii bulgaricus ATCC BAA-365, Lactobacillus gasseri ATCC 33323, Collinsella aerofaciens ATCC 25986, Bacteroides vulgatus ATCC 8482, Campylobacter concisus 13826, Campylobacter curvus 525.92, Campylobacter hominis ATCC BAA-381, Citrobacter koseri ATCC BAA-895, Escherichia coli sv. O139:H28 E24377A (ETEC), Escherichia coli sv. O9 HS, Parabacteroides distasonis ATCC 8503, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis sv. O:1b IP 31758, Vibrio cholerae sv. 014 MZO-2, Pseudoflavonifractor capillosus ATCC 29799, Bifidobacterium adolescentis L2-32, Parabacteroides merdae ATCC 43184, Eubacterium ventriosum ATCC 27560, Bacteroides caccae ATCC 43185, Blautia obeum ATCC 29174, Ruminococcus torques ATCC 27756, Campylobacter jejuni CG8486, Dorea longicatena DSM 13814, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 4b HPB2262, Ruminococcus gnavus ATCC 29149, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 1/2a1 FSL N3-165, Lactobacillus helveticus DPC 4571, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii M21/2, Parvimonas micra ATCC 33270, Coprococcus eutactus ATCC 27759, Clostridium leptum DSM 753, Lachnoclostridium bolteae ATCC BAA-613, Absiella dolichum DSM 3991, Bacteroides uniformis ATCC 8492, Clostridium sp. L2-50, Bacteroides ovatus ATCC 8483, Escherichia coli C ATCC 8739, Escherichia coli DH10B, Finegoldia magna ATCC 29328, Intestinibacter bartlettii DSM 16795, Burkholderia oklahomensis EO147, Dorea formicigenerans ATCC 27755, Escherichia albertii TW07627, Clostridium spiroforme DSM 1552, Streptococcus infantarius infantarius ATCC BAA-102, Providencia stuartii ATCC 25827, Eubacterium siraeum DSM 15702, Bifidobacterium dentium ATCC 27678, Anaerofustis stercorihominis DSM 17244, Bacteroides stercoris ATCC 43183, Lachnoclostridium scindens ATCC 35704, Alistipes putredinis DSM 17216, Escherichia coli O157:H7 EC508, Anaerostipes caccae DSM 14662, Bifidobacterium animalis lactis HN019, Listeria monocytogenes FSL J2-071, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 1/2b FSL J2-064, Clostridium sp. SS2/1, Anaerotruncus colihominis DSM 17241, Akkermansia muciniphila ATCC BAA-835, Bifidobacterium longum DJO10A, Helicobacter pylori Shi470, Lactobacillus casei casei BL23, Ruminococcus lactaris ATCC 29176, Bacteroides coprocola M16, DSM 17136, Clostridium sporogenes ATCC 15579, Bacteroides intestinalis 341, DSM 17393, Bifidobacterium catenulatum DSM 16992, JCM 1194, LMG 11043, Desulfovibrio piger ATCC 29098, Providencia alcalifaciens sv. 019:H2 DSM 30120, Providencia rustigianii DSM 4541, Collinsella stercoris DSM 13279, Anaerococcus hydrogenalis DSM 7454, Helicobacter pylori HPKX_438_AG0C1, Helicobacter pylori 98-10, Helicobacter pylori B128, Helicobacter pylori HPKX_438_CA4C1, Bacteroides eggerthii DSM 20697, Bacteroides pectinophilus ATCC 43243, Bacteroides plebeius M12, DSM 17135, Parabacteroides johnsonii DSM 18315, Lachnoclostridium hylemonae DSM 15053, Holdemanella biformis DSM 3989, Lactobacillus rhamnosus HN001, Tyzzerella nexilis DSM 1787, Bacteroides dorei DSM 17855, Clostridium hiranonis TO-931 DSM 13275, Bacillus cereus AH187 (F4810/72), Bacillus cereus G9842, Bifidobacterium animalis lactis AD011, Bifidobacterium longum infantis ATCC 15697, Escherichia coli 081 ED1a, Escherichia coli SE11, Helicobacter pylori G27, Helicobacter pylori P12, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 4a HCC23, Roseburia inulinivorans DSM 16841, Clostridiales sp. 1_7_47FAA, Lactobacillus acidophilus ATCC 4796, Bifidobacterium bifidum NCIMB 41171, Lactobacillus hilgardii ATCC 8290, Lactobacillus ultunensis DSM 16047, Lactobacillus salivarius HO66, ATCC 11741, Lactobacillus paracasei ATCC 25302, Acidaminococcus intestini D21, Lactobacillus brevis gravesensis ATCC 27305, Lactobacillus fermentum ATCC 14931, Lactobacillus buchneri ATCC 11577, Enterococcus faecalis TX1322, Enterococcus faecalis TX0104, Bifidobacterium breve DSM 20213, JCM 1192, Holdemania filiformis VPI J1-31B-1, DSM 12042, Leuconostoc mesenteroides cremoris ATCC 19254, Catenibacterium mitsuokai DSM 15897, Bacteroides cellulosilyticus DSM 14838, Lachnoclostridium asparagiforme DSM 15981, Coprococcus comes ATCC 27758, Proteus penneri ATCC 35198, Enterococcus faecium TX1330, Lactobacillus rhamnosus LMS2-1, Lactobacillus paracasei 8700:2, Bifidobacterium longum longum ATCC 55813, Helicobacter cinaedi CCUG 18818, Bacteroides coprophilus DSM 18228, JCM 13818, Blautia hydrogenotrophica DSM 10507, Eubacterium hallii DSM 3353, Clostridium methylpentosum R2, DSM 5476, Helicobacter canadensis MIT 98-5491, ATCC 700968, Bifidobacterium longum longum CCUG 52486, Helicobacter pullorum MIT 98-5489, Bifidobacterium animalis lactis Bl-04, ATCC SD5219, Bifidobacterium animalis lactis DSM 10140, Eubacterium eligens ATCC 27750, Eubacterium rectale ATCC 33656, Helicobacter pylori B38, Lactobacillus plantarum JDM1, Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, Acinetobacter baumannii AB900, Parabacteroides sp. 2_1_7, Bacteroides fragilis 3_1_12, Weissella paramesenteroides ATCC 33313, Fusobacterium nucleatum subsp. animalis D11, Escherichia coli D9, Fusobacterium gonidiaformans ATCC 25563, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii A2-165, Butyrivibrio crossotus DSM 2876, Hungatella hathewayi DSM 13479, Lactobacillus antri DSM 16041, Lactobacillus helveticus DSM 20075, Fusobacterium gonidiaformans 3-1-5R, Oxalobacter formigenes HOxBLS, Coprobacillus sp. D7, Fusobacterium nucleatum animalis 7_1, Fusobacterium nucleatum subsp. vincentii 4_1_13, Fusobacterium mortiferum ATCC 9817, Helicobacter winghamensis ATCC BAA-430, Citrobacter portucalensis 30_2, Bacteroides dorei 5_1_36/D4, Escherichia sp. 3_2_53FAA, Clostridium sp. 7_2_43FAA, Escherichia sp. 1_1_43, Fusobacterium periodonticum 2_1_31, Bacteroides sp. 9_1_42FAA, Bacteroides sp. D1, Oxalobacter formigenes OXCC13, Bacteroides sp. 2_2_4, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron 1_1_6, Bacteroides sp. 4_3_47FAA, Fusobacterium varium ATCC 27725, Parabacteroides sp. D13, Clostridioides difficile CD196, Clostridioides difficile R20291, Escherichia coli K-12, MG1655, Mycoplasma hominis PG21, ATCC 23114, Veillonella parvula Te3, DSM 2008, Bifidobacterium longum longum JDM301, Escherichia coli O55:H7 CB9615, Lactobacillus johnsonii FI9785, Bifidobacterium animalis lactis BB-12, Bifidobacterium animalis lactis V9, Escherichia coli O44:H18 042 (EAEC), Escherichia coli O18:K1:H7 IHE3034, Escherichia coli O150:H5 SE15, Helicobacter pylori 51, Helicobacter pylori v225, Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, Acetomicrobium hydrogeniformans ATCC BAA-1850, Bacteroides ovatus SD CC 2a, Bacteroides ovatus SD CMC 3f, Bacteroides vulgatus PC510, Bacteroides xylanisolvens SD CC 1b, Clostridioides difficile NAP07, Clostridioides difficile NAP08, Corynebacterium ammoniagenes DSM 20306, Edwardsiella tarda ATCC 23685, Enterococcus faecium PC4.1, Enterococcus faecium E1071, Grimontia hollisae CIP 101886, Lactobacillus amylolyticus DSM 11664, Turicibacter sanguinis PC909, Vibrio cholerae CT 5369-93, Vibrio cholerae sv. Inaba INDRE 91/1, Vibrio cholerae sv. O1 RC27, Vibrio furnissii sv. II CIP 102972, Vibrio mimicus MB-451, Bacteroides fragilis 2_1_16, Bacteroides sp. 2_1_22, Bacteroides sp. 2_1_33B, Bacteroides sp. 3_1_33FAA, Bacteroides sp. D20, Enterococcus faecalis X98, ATCC 27276, Enterococcus faecium 1,141,733, Enterococcus faecium 1,231,501, Enterococcus faecium Com12, Enterococcus faecium Com15, Fusobacterium periodonticum 1_1_41FAA, Klebsiella variicola 1_1_55, Pediococcus acidilactici 7_4, Streptococcus sp. 2_1_36FAA, Veillonella sp. 3_1_44, Veillonella sp. 6_1_27, Escherichia coli O26:H11 11368, Helicobacter pylori PeCan4, Helicobacter pylori SJM180, Campylobacter jejuni jejuni M1, Edwardsiella tarda FL6-60, Escherichia coli AIEC UM146, Helicobacter pylori 908, Helicobacter pylori Cuz20, Helicobacter pylori Sat464, Campylobacter coli JV20, Enterococcus faecalis TX2134, Escherichia coli MS 107-1, Escherichia coli MS 115-1, Escherichia coli MS 116-1, Escherichia coli MS 119-7, Escherichia coli MS 124-1, Escherichia coli MS 146-1, Escherichia coli MS 175-1, Escherichia coli MS 182-1, Escherichia coli MS 185-1, Escherichia coli MS 187-1, Escherichia coli MS 196-1, Escherichia coli MS 198-1, Escherichia coli MS 200-1, Escherichia coli MS 21-1, Escherichia coli MS 45-1, Escherichia coli MS 69-1, Escherichia coli MS 78-1, Escherichia coli MS 84-1, Bacteroides sp. 1_1_14, Parabacteroides sp. 20_3, Bacteroides sp. 3_1_19, Bacteroides sp. 3_1_23, Bacteroides sp. D22, Burkholderiales bacterium 1_1_47, Bifidobacterium bifidum PRL2010, Bifidobacterium bifidum S17, Bifidobacterium longum infantis 157F-NC, Bifidobacterium longum longum BBMN68, Bifidobacterium longum longum JCM 1217, Campylobacter jejuni jejuni ICDCCJ07001, Helicobacter felis CS1, ATCC 49179, Helicobacter pylori B8, Lactobacillus delbrueckii bulgaricus ND02, Odoribacter splanchnicus 1651/6, DSM 20712, Anaerostipes sp. 3_2_56FAA, Arcobacter butzleri JV22, Bacteroides eggerthii 1_2_48FAA, Bacteroides sp. 3_1_40A, Bacteroides sp. 4_1_36, Bifidobacterium sp. 12_1_47BFAA, Campylobacter upsaliensis JV21, Clostridium sp. HGF2, Lachnoclostridium symbiosum WAL-14163, Lachnoclostridium symbiosum WAL-14673, Coprobacillus cateniformis 29_1, Eggerthella sp. 1_3_56FAA, Erysipelotrichaceae bacterium sp. 3_1_53, Escherichia coli MS 145-7, Faecalibacterium cf. prausnitzii KLE1255, Helicobacter suis HS1, Helicobacter suis HS5, Lachnospiraceae bacterium sp. 5_1_63FAA, Lachnospiraceae bacterium sp. 8_1_57FAA, Pediococcus acidilactici DSM 20284, Phascolarctobacterium succinatutens YIT 12067, Prevotella salivae DSM 15606, Ralstonia sp. 5_7_47FAA, Streptococcus anginosus 1_2_62CV, Streptococcus equinus ATCC 9812, Succinatimonas hippei YIT 12066, Sutterella wadsworthensis 3_1_45B, Alistipes shahii WAL 8301, Bacteroides fragilis 638R, Bacteroides xylanisolvens XB1A, Bifidobacterium longum longum F8, Butyrivibrio fibrisolvens 16/4, Lachnoclostridium cf. saccharolyticum K10, Coprococcus catus GD/7, Enterobacter cloacae cloacae NCTC 9394, Enterococcus faecalis 62, Enterococcus faecalis 7L76, Faecalitalea cylindroides T2-87, Eubacterium rectale DSM 17629, Eubacterium rectale M104/1, Eubacterium siraeum 70/3, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii SL3/3, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii L2-6, Gordonibacter pamelaeae 7-10-1-bT, DSM 19378, Helicobacter pylori Gambia94/24, Helicobacter pylori India7, Helicobacter pylori Lithuania75, Helicobacter pylori SouthAfrica7, Lactobacillus delbrueckii bulgaricus 2038, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 4a L99, Megamonas hypermegale ART12/1, Roseburia intestinalis M50/1, Roseburia intestinalis XB6B4, Ruminococcus bromii L2-63, Blautia obeum A2-162, Ruminococcus sp. SR1/5, Ruminococcus sp. 18P13, Ruminococcus torques L2-14, Clostridiales sp. SS3/4, Anaerostipes hadrus SSC/2, Victivallis vadensis ATCC BAA-548, Clostridium sp. SY8519, Eggerthella sp. YY7918, Helicobacter bizzozeronii CIII-1, Bifidobacterium animalis lactis CNCM I-2494, Bifidobacterium breve UCC2003 (NCIMB8807), Bifidobacterium longum infantis JCM 1222, Escherichia coli DH1 (ME8569), Escherichia coli LF82, Helicobacter pylori 2017, Helicobacter pylori 2018, Helicobacter pylori 83, Helicobacter pylori F16, Helicobacter pylori F30, Helicobacter pylori F32, Helicobacter pylori F57, Lactobacillus amylovorus GRL 1118, Lactobacillus johnsonii DPC 6026, Yersinia enterocolitica palearctica sv. O:3 bt. 4 Y11, Clostridium sp. D5, Bacteroides clarus YIT 12056, Bacteroides fluxus YIT 12057, Bacteroides ovatus 3_8_47FAA, Bacteroides sp. 1_1_30, Bacteroides fragilis 2_1_56FAA, Eggerthella sp. HGA1, Fusobacterium nucleatum subsp. animalis 11_3_2, Klebsiella sp. MS 92-3, Lachnospiraceae bacterium 1_1_57FAA, Lachnospiraceae bacterium 1_4_56FAA, Lachnospiraceae bacterium 2_1_58FAA, Lachnospiraceae bacterium 3_1_46FAA, Lachnospiraceae bacterium 6_1_37FAA, Lachnospiraceae bacterium 5_1_57FAA, Lachnospiraceae bacterium 6_1_63FAA, Lachnospiraceae bacterium 9_1_43BFAA, Neisseria macacae ATCC 33926, Paenibacillus sp. HGF5, Paenibacillus sp. HGF7, Paraprevotella xylaniphila YIT 11841, Parasutterella excrementihominis YIT 11859, Turicibacter sp. HGF1, Lactobacillus reuteri CF48-3A, Bifidobacterium pseudocatenulatum D2CA, Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus W, Alistipes finegoldii AHN 2437, DSM 17242, Microcystis aeruginosa PCC 7806, Megasphaera elsdenii DSM 20460, Acidaminococcus intestini RyC-MR95, Roseburia hominis A2-183, DSM 16839, Enterococcus faecalis OG1RF, ATCC 47077, Helicobacter pylori Puno135, Pseudomonas aeruginosa NCGM2.S1, Helicobacter pylori 35A, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 1/2a 10403S, Listeria monocytogenes FSL R2-561, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 1/2a J0161, Listeria monocytogenes Finland 1988, Helicobacter pylori Puno120, Corynebacterium appendicis CIP 107643, Alistipes sp. HGB5, Bifidobacterium breve SC95, Bifidobacterium longum infantis SC142, Bifidobacterium breve SC154, Bifidobacterium bifidum SC555, Bifidobacterium longum longum SC596, Bifidobacterium longum longum SC664, Bifidobacterium breve JCM 7019, Helicobacter cetorum MIT 99-5656, Helicobacter cetorum MIT 00-7128, Helicobacter pylori Shi112, Helicobacter pylori Shi169, Helicobacter pylori Shi417, Helicobacter pylori PeCan18, Bifidobacterium animalis animalis ATCC 25527, Pseudomonas sp. 2_1_26, Klebsiella sp. 4_1_44FAA, Citrobacter freundii 4_7_47CFAA, Tannerella sp. 6_1_58FAA_CT1, Hungatella hathewayi WAL-18680, Alistipes indistinctus YIT 12060, Odoribacter laneus YIT 12061, Flavonifractor plautii ATCC 29863, Campylobacter sp. 10_1_50, Synergistes sp. 3_1_syn1, Subdoligranulum sp. 4_3_54A2FAA, Enterococcus saccharolyticus 30_1, Lachnoclostridium clostridioforme 2_1_49FAA, Prevotella stercorea DSM 18206, Enterococcus faecalis PC1.1, Bilophila sp. 4_1_30, Desulfovibrio sp. 6_1_46AFAA, Bacillus sp. 7_6_55CFAA_CT2, Lachnospiraceae bacterium sp. 7_1_58FAA, Fusobacterium necrophorum funduliforme 1_1_36S, Erysipelotrichaceae bacterium sp. 21_3, Dorea formicigenerans 4_6_53AFAA, Collinsella tanakaei YIT 12063, Erysipelotrichaceae sp. 2_2_44A, Eubacterium sp. 3_1_31, Dialister succinatiphilus YIT 11850, Lachnoclostridium citroniae WAL-17108, Coprobacillus sp. 8_2_54BFAA, Clostridium sp. 7_3_54FAA, Sutterella parvirubra YIT 11816, Coprobacillus sp. 3_3_56FAA, Hafnia alvei ATCC 51873, Bacillus smithii 7_3_47FAA, Propionibacterium sp. 5_U_42AFAA, Paraprevotella clara YIT 11840, Lactobacillus sp. 7_1_47FAA, Megamonas funiformis YIT 11815, Blautia producta ATCC 27340, Acetomicrobium hydrogeniformans ATCC BAA-1850, Listeria monocytogenes NKB04_01, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 4b NKB04_02, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 4b NKB04_03, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 1/2b NKB06_01, Listeria monocytogenes NKB06_03, Vibrio cholerae sv. O1 Ogava P-18785, Escherichia coli HM605, Helicobacter pylori XZ274, Eubacterium siraeum DSM 15702, Lactobacillus helveticus R0052, Lawsonia intracellularis N343, Escherichia coli DEC15E, Escherichia coli DEC15D, Escherichia coli DEC15C, Desulfitobacterium hafniense DP7, Bifidobacterium longum D2957, Vibrio cholerae ZWU0020, Helicobacter pylori 26695, Clostridium celatum DSM 1785, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-15b, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-25c, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-25d, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-28b, Escherichia coli DEC15A, Escherichia coli DEC15B, Escherichia coli DEC14D, Escherichia coli DEC13C, Escherichia coli DEC13D, Escherichia coli DEC14A, Escherichia coli DEC9E, Escherichia coli DEC5B, Escherichia coli DEC13A, Escherichia coli DEC11D, Escherichia coli DEC11C, Escherichia coli DEC12A, Escherichia coli DEC12C, Escherichia coli DEC12B, Escherichia coli DEC12D, Helicobacter pylori NQ4076, Helicobacter pylori NQ4044, Helicobacter pylori NQ4110, Helicobacter pylori Hp A-5, Helicobacter pylori Hp A-4, Helicobacter pylori Hp A-9, Escherichia coli DEC10E, Escherichia coli DEC10F, Escherichia coli DEC10C, Escherichia coli DEC10D, Escherichia coli DEC10A, Escherichia coli DEC10B, Escherichia coli DEC9D, Escherichia coli DEC11A, Escherichia coli DEC11B, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-43, Escherichia coli DEC9A, Escherichia coli DEC8D, Escherichia coli DEC8C, Escherichia coli DEC9B, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 1/2c SLCC 2372, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 1/2b SLCC 2755, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 4e SLCC 2378, Bifidobacterium bifidum BGN4, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 3b SLCC 2540, Bifidobacterium longum E18, Escherichia coli DEC14B, Escherichia coli DEC14C, Escherichia coli DEC13E, Enterococcus faecalis TX2137, Enterococcus faecalis TX4244, Escherichia coli MS 57-2, Escherichia coli DEC5D, Escherichia coli DEC5E, Escherichia coli DEC6A, Escherichia coli DEC6B, Escherichia coli DEC6C, Escherichia coli DEC6D, Escherichia coli DEC6E, Escherichia coli DEC7A, Escherichia coli DEC7B, Escherichia coli DEC7C, Aeromonas veronii AMC34, Aeromonas hydrophila SSU, Escherichia coli DEC1D, Escherichia coli DEC1E, Escherichia coli DEC1B, Escherichia coli DEC1C, Escherichia coli DEC1A, Barnesiella intestinihominis YIT 11860, Slackia piriformis YIT 12062, Helicobacter pylori GAM118Bi, Helicobacter pylori GAM115Ai, Helicobacter pylori GAM114Ai, Helicobacter pylori GAM112Ai, Helicobacter pylori GAM105Ai, Helicobacter pylori GAM103Bi, Helicobacter pylori GAM101Biv, Helicobacter pylori GAM120Ai, Helicobacter pylori GAM119Bi, Campylobacter jejuni jejuni 2008-979, Shigella dysenteriae CDC 74-1112, Helicobacter pylori CPY6311, Helicobacter pylori NQ4216, Helicobacter pylori NQ4200, Helicobacter pylori NQ4228, Helicobacter pylori CPY6081, Helicobacter pylori CPY6261, Helicobacter pylori CPY6271, Helicobacter pylori NQ4099, Helicobacter pylori NQ4053, Escherichia coli DEC3D, Escherichia coli DEC3E, Escherichia coli DEC2C, Escherichia coli DEC2D, Escherichia coli DEC2A, Escherichia coli DEC2B, Escherichia coli DEC3C, Escherichia coli DEC3B, Escherichia coli DEC2E, Escherichia coli DEC3A, Escherichia coli O104:H4 11-4522, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-41, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-36, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-30, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-27, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-28, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-24, Helicobacter pylori HP250ASi, Helicobacter pylori HP250AFiV, Helicobacter pylori GAMchJs124i, Helicobacter pylori GAMchJs117Ai, Helicobacter pylori GAMchJs114i, Helicobacter pylori HP250AFiii, Helicobacter pylori HP250AFii, Helicobacter pylori HP116Bi, Helicobacter pylori GAMchJs136i, Bifidobacterium longum longum 44B, Escherichia coli HM605, Helicobacter pylori GAM260Bi, Helicobacter pylori GAM260ASi, Helicobacter pylori GAM263BFi, Helicobacter pylori GAM260BSi, Helicobacter pylori GAM252Bi, Helicobacter pylori GAM250T, Helicobacter pylori GAM254Ai, Helicobacter pylori GAM252T, Helicobacter pylori GAM265BSii, Helicobacter pylori GAM264Ai, Bacteroides sp. HPS0048, Enterococcus faecium ERV165, Enterococcus faecium TX1337RF, Escherichia coli MS 85-1, Escherichia coli MS 79-10, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 1/2b FSL R2-503, Listeria monocytogenes FSL J1-194, Bacteroides salyersiae WAL 10018, DSM 18765, JCM 12988, Enterococcus faecalis TX1341, Enterococcus faecalis TX1302, Escherichia coli 4_1_47FAA, Erysipelotrichaceae bacterium sp. 6_1_45, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-19, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-21, Bifidobacterium longum longum 2-2B, Escherichia coli MS 60-1, Sutterella wadsworthensis 2_1_59BFAA, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-1, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-3, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-4, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-23, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-34, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-8, Acinetobacter baumannii OIFC047, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-11, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-24b, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-24c, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-5b, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-74, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-41, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-62, Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis S397, Shigella boydii serotype 7 AMC 4006, ATCC 9905, Anaerostipes hadrus comb. nov. VPI 82-52, DSM 3319, Helicobacter pylori Hp M1, Escherichia coli MS 117-3, Escherichia coli MS 110-3, Escherichia coli MS 16-3, Escherichia coli MS 153-1, Escherichia coli DEC13B, Escherichia coli DEC11E, Escherichia coli DEC12E, Enterococcus faecalis TX1346, Enterococcus faecalis TX1342, Enterococcus faecalis TX1467, Escherichia coli DEC8B, Escherichia coli DEC8A, Escherichia coli DEC7E, Escherichia coli DEC7D, Escherichia coli DEC8E, Escherichia coli DEC9C, Bacteroides oleiciplenus YIT 12058, Helicobacter pylori CPY1124, Lactobacillus rhamnosus ATCC 21052, Helicobacter pylori CPY1662, Helicobacter pylori CPY1313, Helicobacter pylori CPY3281, Helicobacter pylori CPY1962, Escherichia coli DEC5C, Escherichia coli DEC4E, Escherichia coli DEC4D, Escherichia coli DEC5A, Escherichia coli DEC4F, Escherichia coli DEC4A, Escherichia coli DEC3F, Escherichia coli DEC4C, Escherichia coli DEC4B, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-2, Clostridioides difficile 002-P50-2011, Clostridioides difficile 050-P50-2011, Helicobacter pylori GAM239Bi, Helicobacter pylori GAM244Ai, Helicobacter pylori GAM245Ai, Helicobacter pylori GAM246Ai, Helicobacter pylori GAM121Aii, Helicobacter pylori GAM201Ai, Helicobacter pylori GAM210Bi, Helicobacter pylori GAM231Ai, Helicobacter pylori GAM249T, Helicobacter pylori GAM250AFi, Escherichia coli O104:H4 LB226692, Helicobacter pylori HP260Bi, Acinetobacter junii CIP 64.5, Helicobacter pylori NQ4161, Helicobacter pylori Hp A-11, Helicobacter pylori Hp A-20, Helicobacter pylori Hp A-17, Lactobacillus delbrueckii lactis DSM 20072, Helicobacter pylori GAM100Ai, Campylobacter concisus UNSWCD, Helicobacter pylori HP260ASii, Helicobacter pylori HP260BFii, Helicobacter pylori HP250ASii, Helicobacter pylori HP250BFi, Helicobacter pylori HP250BFii, Helicobacter pylori HP250BFiii, Helicobacter pylori HP250BFiV, Helicobacter pylori HP250BSi, Helicobacter pylori HP260AFi, Helicobacter pylori HP260AFii, Yokenella regensburgei ATCC 43003, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-2b, Helicobacter pylori GAM42Ai, Helicobacter pylori GAM71Ai, Helicobacter pylori GAM268Bii, Helicobacter pylori GAM270ASi, Helicobacter pylori GAM83T, Helicobacter pylori GAM93Bi, Helicobacter pylori GAM80Ai, Helicobacter pylori GAM83Bi, Helicobacter pylori GAM96Ai, Helicobacter pylori GAMchJs106B, Bifidobacterium breve 26M2, Listeria innocua ATCC 33091, Escherichia coli Nissle 1917, Helicobacter pylori Hp A-27, Helicobacter pylori Hp A-26, Clostridioides difficile 70-100-2010, Butyricicoccus pullicaecorum 1.2, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-45, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-44, Helicobacter pylori Hp A-16, Helicobacter pylori Hp A-8, Helicobacter pylori Hp A-6, Klebsiella pneumoniae WGLW5, Klebsiella pneumoniae WGLW3, Proteus mirabilis WGLW6, Bifidobacterium longum 1-6B, Clostridium perfringens WAL-14572, Clostridiales sp. OBRC5-5, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-42, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-29, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-16, Lactobacillus saerimneri 30a, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-26, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-25, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-23, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-16, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-15, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-13, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-11, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-30, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-1, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-3, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-4, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-6, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-9, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-10, Helicobacter pylori Hp H-18, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-1b, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-3b, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-4d, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-4c, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-8b, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-13b, Helicobacter pylori Hp P-11b, Lactobacillus johnsonii pf01 GCA_000219475, Helicobacter pylori Hp A-14, Helicobacter pylori Hp M5, Helicobacter pylori Hp M4, Helicobacter pylori Hp M3, Helicobacter pylori Hp M2, Helicobacter pylori Hp M9, Helicobacter pylori Hp M6, Fusobacterium nucleatum animalis ATCC 51191, Bifidobacterium animalis lactis Bi-07, Listeria monocytogenes SLCC 7179, Cedecea davisae 005, DSM 4568, Corynebacterium sp. HFH0082, Paenibacillus sp. HGH0039, Coprococcus sp. HPP0048, Coprococcus sp. HPP0074, Streptomyces sp. HGB0020, Paenisporosarcina sp. HGH0030, Prevotella oralis HGA0225, Sutterella wadsworthensis HGA0223, Veillonella sp. HPA0037, Actinomyces sp. HPA0247, Acidaminococcus sp. HPA0509, Streptococcus sp. HPH0090, Bifidobacterium breve HPH0326, Dermabacter sp. HFH0086, Propionibacterium sp. HGH0353, Streptomyces sp. HPH0547, Bifidobacterium bifidum ATCC 29521, Helicobacter pylori GAM117Ai, Enterococcus faecalis V583, Clostridioides difficile CD196, Blautia sp. KLE 1732, Listeria monocytogenes LO28, Listeria monocytogenes FSL J1-208, Enterococcus faecalis V583, Enterococcus asini ATCC 700915, Megasphaera sp. NM10, Streptococcus sp. I-G2, Streptococcus sp. I-P16, Listeria monocytogenes FSL J1-208, Listeria monocytogenes FSL F2-515, Coprobacillus cateniformis D6, Escherichia coli K-12 MG1655star, Campylobacter jejuni jejuni H22082, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 4b Scott A, Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis CLIJ644, Kocuria rhizophila P7-4, Bifidobacterium breve DPC 6330, Metakosakonia massiliensis JC163, Alistipes senegalensis JC50, Anaerococcus senegalensis JC48, Peptoniphilus senegalensis JC140, Brevibacterium senegalense JC43, Kurthia massiliensis JC30, Bacillus timonensis MM10403188, Paenibacillus senegalensis JC66, Dielma fastidiosa JC118, Senegalimassilia anaerobia JC110, Anaerococcus vaginalis PH9, Peptoniphilus grossensis ph5, Brevibacillus massiliensis phR, Enorma massiliensis phI, Alistipes obesi ph8, Cellulomonas massiliensis JC225, Timonella senegalensis JC301, Noviherbaspirillum massiliense JC206, Bacillus massiliosenegalensis JC6, Bacillus massilioanorexius AP8, Megasphaera massiliensis NP3, Peptoniphilus obesi ph1, Edwardsiella tarda 080813, Edwardsiella tarda ATCC 15947, Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis Pt139, Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis Pt144, Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis Pt145, Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis Pt146, Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis Pt154, Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis Pt155, Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis Pt164, Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis CLIJ623, Escherichia coli O104:H4 TY-2482, Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis CLIJ361, Listeria monocytogenes FSL J2-003, Escherichia coli O104:H4 H112180541, Clostridioides difficile CD37, Oceanobacillus massiliensis Ndiop, Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis 4B, Holdemania massiliensis AP2, Collinsella massiliensis GD3, Fusobacterium nucleatum subsp. animalis 4_8, Streptococcus anginosus C1051, Streptococcus anginosus C238, Fusobacterium nucleatum vincentii 3_1_36A2, Bacteroides sp. 3_2_5, Oscillibacter sp. 40911, Fusobacterium nucleatum 13_3C, Helicobacter macacae MIT 99-5501, Helicobacter canis NCTC 12740, Cetobacterium somerae ATCC BAA-474, Faecalitalea cylindroides ATCC 27803, Pseudomonas sp. HPB0071, Bifidobacterium breve S27, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 7 SLCC 2482, Vibrio cholerae V51, Vibrio cholerae sv. O37 V52, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 1/2a F6900, Listeria monocytogenes sv. 1/2a J2818, Subdoligranulum variabile DSM 15176, Clostridium sp M62/1, Marvinbryantia formatexigens I-52, Citrobacter youngae ATCC 29220, Fusobacterium ulcerans 12-1B, Blautia hansenii VPI C7-24, DSM 20583, Providencia rettgeri DSM 1131, Ralstonia sp. 5_2_56FAA, Bacteroides finegoldii DSM 17565, Bifidobacterium angulatum DSM 20098, Bifidobacterium gallicum DSM 20093, LMG 11596, Bifidobacterium pseudocatenulatum DSM 20438, JCM 1200, LMG 10505, Collinsella intestinalis DSM 13280, Desulfovibrio sp. 3_1_syn3, Enterobacter cancerogenus ATCC 35316, Escherichia sp. 4_1_40B, Fusobacterium nucleatum subsp. animalis 3_1_33, Fusobacterium ulcerans ATCC 49185, Helicobacter bilis ATCC 43879, Listeria grayi DSM 20601, Mitsuokella multacida DSM 20544, Roseburia intestinalis L1-82, Ruminococcus sp. 5_1_39BFAA, Erysipelotrichaceae bacterium 5_2_54FAA, Enterobacteriaceae bacterium 9_2_54FAA, Prevotella copri CB7, DSM 18205, Bacteroides sp. D2, Bilophila wadsworthia 3_1_6, Fusobacterium necrophorum D12, Lactobacillus plantarum ATCC 14917, Ruminococcaceae bacterium D16, Lachnospiraceae bacterium 3_1_57FAA_CT1, Lachnospiraceae bacterium 2_1_46FAA, Fusobacterium nucleatum vincentii 3_1_27, Escherichia coli O104:H4 GOS1, Escherichia coli O104:H4 GOS2, Aneurinibacillus aneurinilyticus ATCC 12856, Fusobacterium nucleatum CTI-1, Fusobacterium nucleatum CTI-2, Fusobacterium nucleatum CTI-3, Providencia alcalifaciens F90-2004, Providencia alcalifaciens 205/92, Providencia alcalifaciens R90-1475, Providencia alcalifaciens RIMD 1656011, Providencia alcalifaciens PAL-1, Providencia alcalifaciens PAL-2, Providencia alcalifaciens PAL-3, Klebsiella oxytoca OK-1, Klebsiella oxytoca KA-2, Coprococcus sp. ART55/1, Eubacterium siraeum V10Sc8a, Fusobacterium nucleatum CTI-6, Fusobacterium nucleatum CTI-7, Fusobacterium nucleatum CTI-5, Bifidobacterium animalis RH, Enterococcus faecalis 918, Campylobacter jejuni jejuni HB93-13, Ruminococcus bicirculans 80/3, Klebsiella oxytoca KONIH1, Bifidobacterium longum BXY01, Escherichia coli Nissle 1917, Serratia marcescens marcescens Db11, Enorma timonensis GD5, Bacteroides salyersiae WAL 10018, DSM 18765, JCM 12988, Intestinibacter bartlettii DSM 16795, Eubacterium ruminantium ATCC 17233, Clostridioides difficile 630, Porphyromonas sp. 31_2, Klebsiella pneumoniae pneumoniae KPNIH28, Bifidobacterium breve JCM 7019, Escherichia coli B7A, Hafnia alvei Stuart 32011, ATCC 13337, Flavonifractor plautii 1_3_50AFAA, Collinsella sp. 4_8_47FAA, Shigella flexneri 2003036 (contamination screened), Shigella flexneri Shi06HN006 (contamination screened), Salmonella enterica enterica sv. typhimurium ATCC 13311, Vibrio cholerae sv. O1 bv. El Tor MAK676, Ruminococcus callidus ATCC 27760, Lachnoclostridium symbiosum ATCC 14940, Clostridium sp. ATCC BAA-442, Eubacterium ramulus VPI C6-27, ATCC 29099, Lactobacillus brevis ATCC 14869, Marvinbryantia formatexigens I-52, Clostridium sp. VPI C48-50, Oscillibacter sp. KLE 1728, Oscillibacter sp. KLE 1745, Clostridium sp. KLE 1755, Clostridium ihumii AP5, Corynebacterium ihumii GD7, Escherichia albertii GTC 14781, Nesterenkonia massiliensis NP1, Clostridium bolteae WAL-14578 JGI Assembly and Annotation, Bacteroides neonati MS4, Bacteroides xylanisolvens SD CC 1b, Gorillibacterium massiliense G5, Vibrio cholerae sv. O1 bv. El Tor 5/66, Helicobacter heilmannii ASB1.4, Peptoniphilus timonensis JC401, Akkermansia muciniphila ATCC BAA-835, Clostridium saudiense JCC, Clostridium jeddahense JCD, Eggerthella lenta 1_1_60AFAA, Parabacteroides sp. HGS0025, Parabacteroides goldsteinii WAL 12034, Clostridiales sp. SM4/1, Corynebacterium ammoniagenes DSM 20306 Genome sequencing, Bacteroides cellulosilyticus WH2, Lactobacillus casei casei ATCC 393, Bacteroides sp. 3_1_13, Klebsiella oxytoca 09-7231, Parabacteroides sp. D26, Lachnoclostridium citroniae WAL-19142, Coprobacillus sp. 8_1_38FAA, Vibrio cholerae sv. 014 MZO-2, Aeromicrobium massiliense JC14, Dorea sp. D27, Klebsiella oxytoca 10-5244, Bacteroides eggerthii 1_2_48FAA, Escherichia coli ST540an, Lachnoclostridium clostridioforme WAL-7855, Clostridium sp. 1_1_41A1FAA, Escherichia coli ST540a, Escherichia coli ST2747, Fusobacterium nucleatum animalis 7_1, Eubacterium sp. 3_1_31, Bifidobacterium bifidum NCIMB 41171, Fusobacterium nucleatum subsp. animalis 21_1A, Helicobacter pylori J99, Lactobacillus antri DSM 16041, Lactobacillus amylolyticus DSM 11664, Vibrio fluvialis NBRC 103150, Bacteroides ovatus ATCC 8483, Bacteroides clarus DSM 22519, Lactobacillus ultunensis DSM 16047, Bifidobacterium angulatum DSM 20098, Vibrio cholerae ZWU0020, Escherichia coli D9, Bifidobacterium breve DSM 20213, JCM 1192, Coprobacillus cateniformis JCM 10604, Ruminococcus faecis JCM 15917, Dielma fastidiosa DSM 26099, Blautia hansenii DSM 20583, Citrobacter portucalensis 30_2, Oxalobacter formigenes OXCC13, bacterium MS4, bacterium OL-1, Akkermansia sp. KLE1605, Clostridium sp. CL-2, Clostridium amazonitimonense LF2, Bacillus andreraoultii KW-12, Helicobacter pylori B508A-T4, Flavonifractor plautii DSM 6740, Pantoea septica LMG 5345, Helicobacter canadensis MIT 98-5491, ATCC 700968, Bacteroides caccae ATCC 43185, Fusobacterium mortiferum ATCC 9817, Fusobacterium gonidiaformans ATCC 25563, Fusobacterium ulcerans ATCC 49185, Blautia sp. Marseille-P2398, Ruminococcus albus, Clostridium sp. CAG:413, Lachnospiraceae str. KH1P17, Blautia sp. An81, Blautia wexlerae, Lachnospiraceae str. LC2019, Ruminococcus sp. CAG:488, Clostridium sp. L2-50, and Clostridium sp. CAG:253.
Acyl Carrier Protein (ACP)Acyl carrier proteins (ACPs or T proteins) comprise a 4′-phosphopantetheine moiety and are capable of catalyzing the addition of a thioester to the phosphopantetheine moiety. The 4′-phosphopantetheine moiety may be post-translationally added to a serine residue on an ACP by a 4′-phosphopantetheinyl transferase (PPTase). Non-limiting examples of 4′-phosphopantetheinyl transferases include Sfp (e.g., UniProtKB - P39135 (SFP_BACSU)).
In some instances, an ACP comprises a sequence that has at least 50% (e.g., at least 55%, at least 60%, at least 65%, at least 70%, at least 71%, at least 72%, at least 73%, at least 74%, at least 75%, at least 76%, at least 77%, at least 78%, at least 79%, at least 80%, at least 81%, at least 82%, at least 83%, at least 84%, at least 85%, at least 86%, at least 87%, at least 88%, at least 89%, at least 90%, at least 91%, at least 92%, at least 93%, at least 94%, at least 95%, at least 96%, at least 97%, at least 98%, at least 99%, or 100%) sequence identity with an ACP sequence shown in Table 1.
A non-limiting example of a sequence logo for ACP proteins is shown in
As used herein, fatty acyl-ACP synthetases or A proteins are capable of conjugating a fatty acid substrate onto an acyl carrier protein (ACP). The fatty acid substrate may be endogenous or exogenous to a host cell or composition (e.g., cell lysate or cell culture broth). A fatty acyl-ACP synthetase may use any type of fatty acid. For example, a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase may use a medium-chain fatty acid or a long-chain fatty acid as a substrate.
Fatty acyl-ACP synthetases use ATP to catalyze the production of fatty acyl-ACPs. The activity of a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase activity may be measured using suitable method known in the art or described in the Examples section below. ATP consumption by a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase may be measured using an in vitro assay. For example, 2-amino-6-mercapto-7-methylpurine riboside (MESG) substrate, which is converted to ribose 1-phosphate and 2-amino-6-mercapto-7-methylpurine product in the presence of inorganic phosphate purine nucleoside phosphorylase (PNP) enzyme, can be used to determine the amount of ATP consumed by a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase in the presence of a fatty acid substrate.
In some instances, a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase comprises a sequence that has at least 50% (e.g., at least 55%, at least 60%, at least 65%, at least 70%, at least 71%, at least 72%, at least 73%, at least 74%, at least 75%, at least 76%, at least 77%, at least 78%, at least 79%, at least 80%, at least 81%, at least 82%, at least 83%, at least 84%, at least 85%, at least 86%, at least 87%, at least 88%, at least 89%, at least 90%, at least 91%, at least 92%, at least 93%, at least 94%, at least 95%, at least 96%, at least 97%, at least 98%, at least 99%, or 100%) sequence identity with a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase sequence shown in Table 1
A non-limiting example of a sequence logo for fatty acyl-ACP synthetases (A proteins) is shown in
Fatty acids are carboxylic acids with aliphatic chains. They can be classified as either saturated or unsaturated. Saturated fatty acids do not have double bonds in their aliphatic chain and have the formula CH3(CH2)nCOOH, where C is carbon, H is hydrogen, O is oxygen, and n is any non-negative integer (e.g., n may be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 or higher, including any values in between). In contrast, unsaturated fatty acids have at least one double bond in their aliphatic chain, resulting in either a cis (hydrogen atoms on the same side of the double bond) or trans hydrogen configuration.
Fatty acids may also be classified by length. Short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) have aliphatic chains of up to 5 carbons. Medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs) have aliphatic chains of 6 to 12 carbons (e.g., 6 carbons, 7 carbons, 8 carbons, 9 carbons, 10 carbons, 11 carbons, 12 carbons, 6 to 8 carbons, 6 to 9 carbons, 6 to 10 carbons, 6 to 11 carbons, 7 to 9 carbons, 7 to 10 carbons, 7 to 11 carbons, 7 to 12 carbons, 8 to 10 carbons, 8 to 11 carbons, 8 and 12 carbons, 9 to 11 carbons, 9 to 12 carbons, or 10 to 12 carbons), inclusive. MCFAs include hexanoic acid, octanoic acid, decanoic acid, and dodecanoic acid. Long-chain fatty acids (LCFAs) have aliphatic chains ranging from 13 to 21 carbons (e.g., 13 carbons, 14 carbons, 15 carbons, 16 carbons, 17 carbons, 18 carbons, 19 carbons, 20 carbons, 21 carbons, or 15 to 20 carbons), inclusive. Non-limiting examples of LCFAs include oleic acid, palmitoleic acid, and nervonic acid. Very long chain fatty acids (VLCFAs) comprise aliphatic chains of 22 or more carbons (e.g., at least 23, at least 25, at least 30, at least 35, at least 40, at least 50, at least 60, at least 70, at least 80, at least 90, or at least 100, including all values in between). Non-limiting examples of VLCFAs include lignoceric acid and hexacosanoic acid. Most naturally-occurring fatty acids have unbranched aliphatic chains and have an even number of carbons.
In some embodiments, a fatty acid comprises a straight-chain alkyl chain. In some embodiments, the straight-chain alkyl chain comprises 10-12 carbons.
In some embodiments, a fatty acid comprises a cis-9 double bond.
A fatty acid may be a free fatty acid. A free fatty acid is a non-esterified fatty acid (NEFA).
Non-limiting examples of fatty acids include acetic acid, propionic acid, butyric acid, valeric acid, hexanoic acid, octanoic acid, capric acid, lauric acid, myristic acid, pentadecanoic acid, palmitic acid, stearic acid, arachidic acid, iso-pentadecanoic acid, palmitoleic acid, oleic acid, vaccenic acid, linoleic acid, γ-linolenic acid, α-linolenic acid, dihomo-γ-linolenic acid, arachidonic acid, eicosapentaenoic acid, docosapentaenoic acid, docosahexaenoic acid, 8-methyl-6-nonenoic acid, octynoic acid, myristic acid alkyne, and palmitic acid alkyne. See, e.g., Table 3.
A fatty acid may be exogenous or endogenous in reference to a host cell or a composition. As used herein an exogenous fatty acid refers to a fatty acid that is introduced. The exogenous fatty acid may be a fatty acid that is introduced to a host cell or added to a composition (e.g., a cell culture broth or cell lysate). In some instances, the host cell is a bacterium (e.g., Escherichia coli). An exogenous fatty acid may be derived from another cell or produced synthetically. As a non-limiting example, a host cell may naturally produce a particular fatty acid but the same fatty acid may be derived from an exogenous source and the exogenous fatty acid may be introduced to the cell. In some embodiments, an exogenous fatty acid is not naturally produced by a host cell.
In some embodiments, an exogenous fatty acid is acetic acid, propionic acid, butyric acid, valeric acid, hexanoic acid, octanoic acid, capric acid, lauric acid, myristic acid, pentadecanoic acid, palmitic acid, stearic acid, arachidic acid, iso-pentadecanoic acid, palmitoleic acid, oleic acid, vaccenic acid, linoleic acid, γ-linolenic acid, α-linolenic acid, dihomo-γ-linolenic acid, arachidonic acid, eicosapentaenoic acid, docosapentaenoic acid, docosahexaenoic acid, 8-methyl-6-nonenoic acid, octynoic acid, myristic acid alkyne, or palmitic acid alkyne. See, e.g., Table 3.
In contrast, an endogenous fatty acid refers to a fatty acid that is present in a host cell or composition (e.g. a cell lystate or a cell culture broth). In some embodiments, an endogenous fatty acid is acetic acid, propionic acid, butyric acid, valeric acid, hexanoic acid, octanoic acid, capric acid, lauric acid, myristic acid, pentadecanoic acid, palmitic acid, stearic acid, arachidic acid, iso-pentadecanoic acid, palmitoleic acid, oleic acid, vaccenic acid, linoleic acid, γ-linolenic acid, α-linolenic acid, dihomo-γ-linolenic acid, arachidonic acid, eicosapentaenoic acid, docosapentaenoic acid, docosahexaenoic acid, 8-methyl-6-nonenoic acid, octynoic acid, myristic acid alkyne, or palmitic acid alkyne. See, e.g., Table 3.
Fatty Acyl-TransferasesThe fatty acyl-transferases of the present disclosure are capable of conjugating an amine to a thiotemplated fatty acid (e.g., a fatty acyl-ACP) to produce a fatty acid amide and may be referred to as C proteins. The amine may be endogenous or exogenous to a host cell or composition (e.g., cell lysate or cell culture broth).
In some instances, a fatty acyl-transferase comprises a sequence that has at least 50% (e.g., at least 55%, at least 60%, at least 65%, at least 70%, at least 71%, at least 72%, at least 73%, at least 74%, at least 75%, at least 76%, at least 77%, at least 78%, at least 79%, at least 80%, at least 81%, at least 82%, at least 83%, at least 84%, at least 85%, at least 86%, at least 87%, at least 88%, at least 89%, at least 90%, at least 91%, at least 92%, at least 93%, at least 94%, at least 95%, at least 96%, at least 97%, at least 98%, at least 99%, or 100%) sequence identity with a fatty acyl-transferase sequence shown in Table 1.
Amines are derivatives of ammonia, wherein one or more of the hydrogen atoms have been replaced with a substituent group (R group). Non-limiting examples of amines include phenylalanine, tryptophan, tyrosine, histidine, lysine, glycine, alanine, valine, leucine, isoleucine, methionine, proline, serine, threonine, cysteine, asparagine, glutamine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, arginine, ornithine, β-alanine, L-DOPA, creatine, citrulline, phenylacetylglutamine, phenylethylamine, tryptamine, tyramine, histamine, serotonin, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, γ-aminobutryic acid (GABA), aminovaleric acid, ethanolamine, cadaverine, putrescine, spermine, spermidine, agmatine, propylamine, butylamine, dimethylamine, pyrollidine, piperidine, homocysteine, cysteamine, homocysteamine, taurine, hypotaurine, glutathione, octopamine, 3-iodothyronamine, melatonin, and vanillylamide. See, e.g., Table 3.
An amine may be endogenous or exogenous to a host cell or a composition. As used herein an exogenous amine refers to an amine that is introduced. The exogenous amine may be an amine that is introduced to a host cell or added to a composition (e.g., a cell culture broth or cell lysate). In some instances, the host cell is a bacterium (e.g., Escherichia coli). An exogenous amine may be derived from another cell or produced synthetically. As a non-limiting example, a host cell may naturally produce a particular amine but the same amine may be derived from an exogenous source and the exogenous amine may be introduced to the cell. In some instances, an exogenous amine is not naturally produced by a particular host cell.
VariantsVariants of the sequences (e.g., biosynthetic enzymes), including nucleic acid or amino acid sequences described herein are also encompassed by the present disclosure. A variant may share at least 5%, at least 10%, at least 15%, at least 20%, at least 25%, at least 30%, at least 35%, at least 40%, at least 45%, at least 50%, at least 55%, at least 60%, at least 65%, at least 70%, at least 71%, at least 72%, at least 73%, at least 74%, at least 75%, at least 76%, at least 77%, at least 78%, at least 79%, at least 80%, at least 81%, at least 82%, at least 83%, at least 84%, at least 85%, at least 86%, at least 87%, at least 88%, at least 89%, at least 90%, at least 91%, at least 92%, at least 93%, at least 94%, at least 95%, at least 96%, at least 97%, at least 98%, at least 99%, or 100% sequence identity with a reference sequence, including all values in between. Sequence identity to a particular reference sequence may be determined by sequence alignment programs and parameters described herein and known to those skilled in the art.
The comparison of sequences and determination of percent identity between two sequences can be accomplished using a mathematical algorithm. Techniques for determining identity are codified in publicly available computer programs. Exemplary computer software to determine homology between two sequences include, but are not limited to, the GCG program package (Devereux, J. et al. Nucleic Acids Research, 12(1): 387, 1984), the BLAST suite (Altschul, S. F. et al. Nucleic Acids Res. 25: 3389, 1997), and FASTA (Altschul, S. F. et al. J. Molec. Biol. 215: 403, 1990). Other techniques include: the Smith-Waterman algorithm (Smith, T.F. et al. J. Mol. Biol. 147: 195, 1981); the Needleman-Wunsch algorithm (Needleman, S.B. et al. J. Mol. Biol. 48: 443, 1970); and the Fast Optimal Global Sequence Alignment Algorithm (FOGSAA) (Chakraborty, A. et al. Sci Rep.3: 1746, 2013).
In some instances, a biosynthetic enzyme comprises a conservative amino acid substitution relative to a reference sequence disclosed herein. A conservative amino acid substitution is an amino acid substitution that does not alter the relative charge or size characteristics of the protein or peptide in which the amino acid substitution is made. Conservative substitutions of amino acids include substitutions made amongst amino acids within the following groups: (a) M, I, L, V; (b) F, Y, W; (c) K, R, H; (d) A, G; (e) S, T; (f) Q, N; and (g) E, D.
Variants can be prepared according to methods for altering polypeptide sequences known to one of ordinary skill in the art such as those are found in references that compile such methods (see, e.g., Current Protocols in Molecular Biology, Ausubel, F.M., et al., New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2006; Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual, Green, M.R. and Sambrook J., New York: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2012; Gibson, D.G., et al., Nature Methods 6(5):343-345 (2009), the teachings of which relating to polypeptide preparation and modifications are herein incorporated by reference).
As a non-limiting example, any of the biosynthetic enzymes may be from one of the homologous pathways listed in Table 4.
Provided herein, in some embodiments, are vectors encoding human gut microbiome-derived bacterium genes involved in biosynthesis. In some embodiments, a vector encodes at least one human gut microbiome-derived bacterium gene selected from a fatty acyl transferase, an acyl carrier protein, and a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase. In some embodiments, a vector encodes at least two human gut microbiome-derived bacterium genes selected from a fatty acyl transferase, an acyl carrier protein, and a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase. In some embodiments, a vector encodes at least three human gut microbiome-derived bacterium genes selected from a fatty acyl transferase, an acyl carrier protein, and a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase. A vector may further encode a hydrolase, a lipid transfer protein, a glycosyltransferase, or any combination thereof.
In some embodiments, a vector comprises an open reading frame encoding at least one biosynthetic enzyme. An open reading frame is a nucleic acid sequence that is transcribed continuously into an mRNA molecule, and then translated continuously into an amino acid sequence, uninterrupted by stop codons. The translated open reading frame may be all or a portion of a gene encoding a protein or polypeptide.
The vectors comprise at least one regulatory element controlling expression of at least one biosynthetic gene from a human gut microbiome-derived bacterium. The regulatory element may be a promoter. In some instances, all biosynthetic genes in a vector are in a single operon and are regulated by one regulatory element. In some instances, at least 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,7, 8, 9, 10, or more biosynthetic genes in a vector are in a single operon and are regulated by one regulatory element. A vector may comprise 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, or more operons.
For example, a vector may comprise at least one promoter operably linked to a nucleic acid encoding a fatty acyl transferase, an acyl carrier protein, a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase, or any combination thereof. In some embodiments, a vector comprises one promoter operably linked to a nucleic acid encoding a human gut microbiome-derived bacterium fatty acyl transferase, a human gut microbiome-derived bacterium acyl carrier protein, and a human gut microbiome-derived bacterium fatty acyl-ACP synthetase. In some embodiments, nucleic acids encoding the fatty acyl transferase, the acyl carrier protein, and the fatty acyl-ACP synthetase are each operably linked to a separate promoter in a vector.
A vector may comprise a nucleic acid encoding a biosynthetic enzyme from a human gut microbiome-derived bacterium, and the nucleic acid may be codon optimized for heterologous expression in a host cell. For example, the nucleic acid may be codon optimized for expression in an E. coli host cell. A codon usage database may be used to improve expression of a heterologous sequence in a host cell. See, e.g., Gustafsson et al., Trends Biotechnol. 2004 Jul;22(7):346-53.
A promoter is a control region of a nucleic acid sequence through which initiation and rate of transcription of the remainder of a nucleic acid sequence are controlled. A promoter may also contain sub-regions at which regulatory proteins and molecules, such as RNA polymerase and other transcription factors, may bind. A promoter drives expression or drives transcription of the nucleic acid sequence that it regulates. A promoter is considered to be “operably linked” to a nucleotide sequence when it is in a correct functional location and orientation in relation to the nucleotide sequence to control (“drive”) transcriptional initiation and/or expression of that sequence. Promoters may be constitutive or inducible. An inducible promoter is a promoter that is regulated (e.g., activated or inactivated) by the presence or absence of a particular factor.
Inducible promoters for use in accordance with the present disclosure include those that function in bacteria. An exemplary inducible promoter for use herein is an isopropyl β-D-1-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG)-inducible promoter or a tetracycline-inducible promoter (e.g., when used with a reverse tetracycline-controlled transactivator (rtTA)). In some embodiments, the IPTG-inducible promoter is an inducible T7 promoter. The vector may further encode a lac repressor (LacI).
In some embodiments, a vector may encode a repressible promoter, which inactivates expression of an operably linked nucleic acid in the presence of a factor. For example, a tetracycline-sensitive promoter may be used with a tetracycline-controlled transactivator (tTA), such that in the presence of tetracycline, the tTA binds to the tetracycline-sensitive promoter and prevents expression of the operably linked nucleic acid.
In some embodiments, a vector further encodes a selection marker. Suitable selection markers include antibiotic resistance genes (e.g., genes encoding resistance to kanamaycin, spectinomycin, ampicillin, carbenicillin, bleomycin, chloramphenicol, coumermycin, gentamycin, tetracycline, or any combination thereof).
In some instances, a vector encodes a ribosomal binding site (RBS). Ribosomal binding sites promote ribosomal recruitment during initiation of protein translation and are located upstream of a start codon. In prokaryotes, the RBS may be referred to as a Shine-Dalgarno sequence. A RBS sequence may comprise AGGAGG. As a non-limiting example, a RBS for use in E. coli may comprise the sequence AGGAGGU.
Examples of vectors for expressing include, but are not limited to, plasmids, phagemids and bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs). The vectors of the present disclosure may be generated using standard molecular cloning methods (see, e.g., Current Protocols in Molecular Biology, Ausubel, F.M., et al., New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2006; Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual, Green, M.R. and Sambrook J., New York: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2012; Gibson, D.G., et al., Nature Methods 6(5):343-345 (2009), the teachings of which relating to molecular cloning are herein incorporated by reference).
Without further elaboration, it is believed that one skilled in the art can, based on the above description, utilize the present invention to its fullest extent. The following specific embodiments are, therefore, to be construed as merely illustrative, and not limitative of the remainder of the disclosure in any way whatsoever. All publications cited herein are incorporated by reference for the purposes or subject matter referenced herein.
Engineered CellsAny of the vectors described herein may be introduced into a host cell to produce an engineered cell using routine methods known in the art. An engineered cell comprises at least one engineered nucleic acid or is otherwise structurally or functionally distinct from a wildtype counterpart. Thus, a host cell comprising a vector encoding at least one biosynthetic enzyme that is from a human gut microbiome-derived bacterium is considered an engineered cell. In some instances, an engineered cell comprises at least three human gut microbiome-derived bacterium biosynthetic enzymes, including a fatty-acyl transferase, an acyl carrier protein synthase, and a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase. In some instances, all three enzymes (a fatty-acyl transferase, an acyl carrier protein synthase, and a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase) are derived from the same species of human gut microbiome bacterium. In some embodiments, at least two of the three enzymes (a fatty-acyl transferase, an acyl carrier protein synthase, and/or a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase) are derived from the same species of human gut microbiome bacterium. In some embodiments, all three enzymes (a fatty-acyl transferase, an acyl carrier protein synthase, and a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase) are derived from distinct species of human gut microbiome bacteria. In some embodiments, one or more of the enzymes (a fatty-acyl transferase, an acyl carrier protein synthase, and/or a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase) are derived from the same species of human gut microbiome bacterium, and other one or more of the enzymes are derived from a different one or more species of human gut microbiome bacteria. In some instances, the human gut microbiome bacterium is from the Clostridia class.
The engineered cells of the present disclosure may further comprise other biosynthetic enzymes from human gut microbiome-derived bacterium. For example, the engineered cells may comprise a hydrolase, a lipid transfer protein, a glycosyltransferase, or any combination thereof. Lipid transfer proteins, which may also be referred to as sterol carrier proteins or sterol transfer proteins, are capable of transferring steroids between cellular membranes. See, e.g., Pfam Identifier: PF02036. The hydrolases may be from the alpha/beta hydrolase superfamily and comprise eight beta strands connected by 6 alpha helices. See, e.g., Pfam Identifier: PF12146. Glycosyltransferases are capable of catalyzing the trasfer of sugars from donor molecules to acceptor molecules. See, e.g., Lozupone et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Sep 30;105(39):15076-81; Bhattacharya et al., PLoS One. 2015 Nov 6;10(11):e0142038; Brockhausen, Front Immunol. 2014 Oct 20;5:492.
A non-limiting example of a glycosyltransferase is: EreG: (E. rectale pathway):
In some instances, at least two, at least three, at least four, at least five, at least six, at least seven, at least eight, at least nine, at least ten, or more of the biosynthetic enzymes in an engineered cell are from the same species of human gut microbiome-derived bacterium. In some instances, all biosynthetic enzymes from human gut microbiome-derived bacteria are from different species of human gut microbiome-derived bacteria. In some instances, all biosynthetic enzymes from human gut microbiome-derived bacteria are from the same species of human gut microbiome-derived bacteria.
The host cell may be, for example, Yersinia spp., Escherichia spp., Klebsiella spp., Acinetobacter spp., Bordetella spp., Neisseria spp., Aeromonas spp., Franciesella spp., Corynebacterium spp., Citrobacter spp., Chlamydia spp., Hemophilus spp., Brucella spp., Mycobacterium spp., Legionella spp., Rhodococcus spp., Pseudomonas spp., Helicobacter spp., Salmonella spp., Vibrio spp., Bacillus spp., Erysipelothrix spp., Salmonella spp., Streptomyces spp., Bacteroides spp., Prevotella spp., Clostridium spp., Bifidobacterium spp., or Lactobacillus spp.
In some instances, the host cell is a yeast cell.
The engineered cells of the present disclosure may be propagated under conditions well known in the art (e.g. temperature, culture broth and incubation times). In some embodiments, in which the engineered cells comprise nucleic acids operably linked to inducible promoters, the engineered cells are cultured in the presence of an effective amount inducing agent to induce expression from the inducible promoter. In some embodiments, the inducible promoter driving expression of a nucleic acid encoding a heterologous protein is a IPTG-inducible promoter, thus, the engineered cells are cultured in an effective amount of IPTG to induce expression from the tetracycline-inducible promoter. In some embodiments, a vector encoding T7 RNA polymerase may also be introduced into a cell with a IPTG-inducible promoter. In some embodiments, the inducible promoter driving expression of a nucleic acid encoding a heterologous protein is a tetracycline-inducible promoter, thus, the engineered cells are cultured in an effective amount of tetracycline to induce expression from the tetracycline-inducible promoter.
Methods of Producing Fatty Acid AmidesSome aspects of the present disclosure provide methods for producing a fatty acid amide using human gut microbiome-derived bacterium biosynthetic enzymes. Biosynthetic enzymes include fatty acyl-transferase, acyl carrier protein (ACP), fatty acyl-ACP synthetase, hydrolases, lipid transfer proteins, and glycosyltransferases.
The methods comprise contacting a composition comprising at least one fatty acid and at least one amine with one or more of the biosynthetic enzymes described herein. A set of biosynthetic enzymes (e.g., at least 2, at least 3, at least 4, at least 5, at least 6, at least 7, at least 8, at least 9, at least 10, or more) may be used to produce fatty acid amides. In some instances, at least 2, at least 3, at least 4, at least 5, at least 6, at least 7, at least 8, at least 9, at least 10, or more of the biosynthetic enzymes are from the same species of human gut microbiome-derived bacterium. In some instances, the set of biosynthetic enzymes may be all from the same species of human gut microbiome-derived bacterium. In some instances, the set of biosynthetic enzymes are all from different species of human gut microbiome-derived bacterium. In some embodiments, the set of biosynthetic enzymes comprises a fatty acyl-transferase, an acyl carrier protein (ACP), and a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase.
For example, at least 1, at least 2, at least 3, at least 4, at least 5, at least 6, at least 7, at least 8, at least 9, at least 10, or more of the microbiome-derived bacterium biosynthetic enzymes in a set may be from the Clostridia class. In sets with more than one Clostridia biosynthetic enzyme, at least 1, at least 2, at least 3, at least 4, at least 5, at least 6, at least 7, at least 8, at least 9, at least 10, or more of the biosynthetic enzymes may be from the same order, family, genus, species, or any combination thereof.
The fatty acid may be a free fatty acid. In some instances, at least 1, at least 2, at least 3, at least 4, at least 5, at least 6, at least 7, at least 8, at least 9, at least 10, at least 15, at least 16, at least 17, at least 18, at least 19, at least 20, at least 30, at least 40, at least 50, at least 60, at least 70, at least 80, at least 90, at least 100, or more fatty acids, including all values in between, may be used. A composition may comprise fatty acids that are all of the same type, fatty acids that are all different, or some fatty acids that are the same and some fatty acids that are different. In some instances, at least 1, at least 2, at least 3, at least 4, at least 5, at least 6, at least 7, at least 8, at least 9, at least 10, at least 15, at least 16, at least 17, at least 18, at least 19, at least 20, at least 30, at least 40, at least 50, at least 60, at least 70, at least 80, at least 90, at least 100, or more fatty acids, including all values in between, may be used.
A composition may comprise amines that are all of the same type, amines that are all different, or some amines that are the same and some amines that are different. In some instances, at least 1, at least 2, at least 3, at least 4, at least 5, at least 6, at least 7, at least 8, at least 9, at least 10, at least 15, at least 16, at least 17, at least 18, at least 19, at least 20, at least 30, at least 40, at least 50, at least 60, at least 70, at least 80, at least 90, at least 100, or more amines, including all values in between, may be used.
As one of ordinary skill in the art would appreciate, selection of a particular fatty acid and amine pair may be dependent upon the fatty acid amide of interest. As a non-limiting example, palmitoeyl putrescine is a fatty acid amide (FAA) that is formed by the conjugation of palmitoleic acid and putrescine. To make palmitoeyl putrescine, palmitoleic acid would be selected as the fatty acid and putrescine would be selected as the amine.
The methods may comprise using one or more more purified biosynthetic enzymes, a lysate comprising one or more biosynthetic enzymes, or culturing a cell comprising a vector encoding one or more biosynthetic enzymes.
Protein purification methods include, but are not limited, to size exclusion chromatography, ammonium sulfate precipitation, ion exchange chromatography, immobilized metal chelate chromatography, thiophilic adsorption, melon gel chromatography and antibody ligand chromatography, any of which may be used as provided herein to recover a protein
The engineered cells of the present disclosure may be propagated under conditions well known in the art (e.g. temperature, culture media and incubation times). In some embodiments, in which the engineered cell comprises nucleic acids operably linked to inducible promoters, the engineered cells are cultured in the presence of an effective amount inducing agent to induce expression from the inducible promoter. In some embodiments, the inducible promoter driving expression of a nucleic acid encoding a heterologous protein is a IPTG-inducible promoter, thus, the engineered cells are cultured in an effective amount of IPTG to induce expression from the IPTG inducible promoter.
Any of the compounds described herein, including fatty acids, amines, and fatty acid amides, disclosed herein may be identified and extracted using any method known in the art. Mass spectrometry (e.g., LC-MS, GC-MS) is a non-limiting example of a method for identification and may be used to extract a compound of interest.
EXAMPLES Example 1 Clostridia NRPS-Like Pathways Identified From Human Gut Sequencing DataThe human gut microbiome genomic datasets were systematically screening for the presence of metabolite-encoding biosynthetic pathways (
Among the HMP-derived, transcribed, and uncharacterized pathways, a family of eight pathways specific to the Clostridia bacterial class was chosen for investigation (
To investigate the representation and distribution of the eight HMP-derived pathways with respect to other members in a general database, homologous pathways were computationally searched on the NCBI nonredundant (nr) database and a total of 148 pathways were identified. When these pathways were organized based on protein sequence phylogeny, the Coprococcus eutactus, Lachnoclostridium clostridioforme, and Eubacterium rectale pathways from HMP data were found to be particularly represented across multiple strains, with eight to nine instances each at >98% sequence identity (
Considering that some of the pathways were identified using metagenomic data and the host organisms were never isolated, E. coli heterologous expression was first attempted as a characterization strategy. The eight pathways were synthesized from genome or metagenome sequence with E. coli optimized codons. Each gene in the pathway was placed under a strong T7 promoter and ribosomal binding site for robust and inducible expression. The resulting redesigned pathways were introduced into E. coli BAP1 host that expresses Sfp PPTase to ensure proper activity of the heterologous NRPS machinery.28 Various fermentation and extraction conditions were attempted for the eight pathways, but clone-specific compound production was detected with sufficient titers for only the E. rectale pathway (
The three NRPS domain-containing biosynthetic genes are the only genes conserved across all eight characterized FAA pathways. However, some pathways also contained genes encoding a sterol transfer protein (Pfam: PF02036) and an alpha/beta hydrolase protein (Pfam: PF12146) (Table 1). The exclusion of these genes had no effect on FAA production in a heterologous expression system (
Palmitoeyl putrescine is a fatty acid amide (FAA) that is formed by the conjugation of palmitoleic acid and putrescine. Much like peptide bond formation, it is biochemically viable for NRPS domains to join a fatty acid and an amine to generate a FAA. However, considering that putrescine is highly produced in E. coli, but deficient in Clostridia,38 it is questionable as to whether palmitoleic acid and putrescine are actually the preferred substrates of this pathway. To investigate the contribution of the biosynthetic enzymes, single-gene knockout pathways without one of the biosynthetic genes were constructed and tested for production in E. coli. Removing either the A, T, or Sfp PPTase gene demolished compound production, thereby confirming the thiotemplating activity of A onto T in FAA production. However, removing the C gene had no effect on production, indicating that palmitoeyl putrescine is a shunt product that formed as a result of a different metabolic pool in E. coli host (
To further investigate the biosynthetic mechanism of FAA production, each of the three biosynthetic genes in the palmitoeyl putrescine-producing E. rectale pathway were cloned in a separate construct, expressed for protein purification, and reconstituted in vitro, such that the A and C activity can be measured independently with defined substrates. The A activity was first measured based on the amount of inorganic pyrophosphate (PPi) that was formed from ATP consumption. Up to 30-fold increase in PPi level relative to negative control was observed with fatty acid substrates, while no difference was observed with amino acid substrates (
On the other hand, although the result from E. coli heterologous production suggests that the C protein does not catalyze a reaction involving putrescine, it may instead recognize a different amine. Since the condensation enzyme does not consume ATP, the amount of the product FAA itself was used as the metric for enzyme activity. Because different compounds ionize at varying intensities, ion abundance as measured by LCMS cannot be directly compared between FAAs of different amine moieties. However, based on the observation that the amine substrate, such as putrescine, can non-enzymatically release the tethered fatty acid to generate FAA, the FAA level was normalized in the presence of the C enzyme relative to the level in its absence. Among the small set of biological amines that were tested, the C enzyme showed preference towards incorporation of tryptamine, with about 8-fold higher activity than putrescine (
Based on in vivo gene knockout and in vitro reconstitution studies, a biosynthetic scheme for FAA formation can be constructed, where T is an acyl carrier protein, A is a fatty acyl-acyl carrier protein synthetase, and C is a N-fatty acyltransferase (
Bioinformatics has at times permitted the prediction of compound structure from primary sequence data alone,41 but structure prediction was misleading for these pathways. While a peptide-based structure can be predicted from the sequence based on the presence of NRPS domains, it instead produced FAA with a biosynthetic machinery that shows limited homology to previously known FAA pathways.42 Surprisingly, as described herein, this NRPS condensation domain protein could be used to catalyze the incorporation of an untethered substrate, like tryptamine, that does not have a carboxylate moiety.
Preferred FAA Products Characterized by In Vitro Substrate CombinatoricsThe human gut lumen consists of various fatty acid and amine substrates from different sources that the pathway can incorporate for FAA production. To characterize the preferred product, an in vitro substrate panel assay was set up to investigate substrate selectivity of the biosynthetic enzymes for each of the eight identified HMP-derived pathways (
The A protein had a higher enzymatic activity than the C protein, with around 40-60 fold difference in the A protein between the highest and lowest substrates, compared to 5-15 fold difference in the C protein for the C. eutactus, M. formatexigens, R. bacterium, E. rectale pathways. This can be partially attributed to the fact that the enzymatic activity of the C protein is competing with nonenzymatic release of the tethered substrate, a phenomenon that is known in multimodular assembly reaction.48 However, even taking that into consideration, the observed enzymatic activity of the C protein for the L. clostridioforme, B. producta, C. celatum, C. sp pathways was low, with 2 fold difference with homocysteine substrate being the highest. Because of the lack of precedence for this type of condensation enzyme, the possibility that this 2 fold difference in activity is relevant in the context of this in vitro system and that homocysteine is the preferred amine substrate for these four pathways cannot be discounted. However, considering that previously characterized product release domains in NRPS systems compete against nonenzymatic release with at least 2 fold higher activity,49,50 it is more likely that the amine panel does not contain the appropriate substrate for these four pathways to observe C enzymatic activity higher than the 2 fold-difference threshold.
On the other hand, the C protein show higher substrate selectivity than the A protein, with 25-100% higher activity between the highest and second highest substrates in the C protein, compared to 8-40% in the A protein. Barring for differences in rank order, the A proteins in all pathways generally preferred to incorporate either middle-chain fatty acid (e.g. lauric acid) or long-chain fatty acid with cis-9 double bond (e.g. oleic acid), both of which fit in a hydrophilic pocket that selects for a straight-chain alkyl chain of 10-12 carbons in length from the amide bond. Meanwhile, the C proteins show diversity in substrate selectivity, from the straight-chain amine (e.g. aminovaleric acid) of the C. eutactus pathway to the arylamine (e.g. tryptamine) of the E.rectale pathway.
The fatty acid and amine substrates yielding the highest enzymatic activity were determined for each pathway, leading to the production of oleoyl aminovaleric acid for the C. eutactus pathway, oleoyl dopamine for the M. formatexigens pathway, oleoyl tyramine for the R. bacterium pathway, and lauroyl tryptamine for the E. rectale pathway as the major FAA (
Organisms use acyl carrier proteins homologous to the FAA pathway’s T protein to make endogenous fatty acids.51 Therefore, in order for the FAA pathway to utilize exogenous fatty acids, the biosynthetic proteins may have a mechanism that prevents crosstalk with other homologous proteins. To investigate such pathway-specific interactions, the biosynthetic proteins from the two FAA pathways that make oleoyl aminovaleric acid and lauroyl tryptamine were swapped and their effect on enzyme activity was measured. While the C protein lost activity, the A protein retained activity after swapping the T protein. Swapping the A domain, while retaining the T and C protein pair from the same pathway, permitted the enzymatic production of hybrid FAA that incorporated the substrates from two different pathways (
Escherichia coli DH10B (New England BioLabs) was used for routine cloning. E. coli BAP1 E. coli BAP1 containing T7 DNA polymerase and Sfp phosphopantetheinyl transferase was used for heterologous expression of re-designed pathways.28 E. coli BL21(DE3) (Sigma-Aldrich) was used for protein expression and pathway expression in the absence of Sfp. Plasmid was introduced by electroporation, with electrocompetent cells prepared for the non-commercially available BAP1 strains using published protocol.62 Vector pET28a (Novagen) was used as backbone for all pathway and protein expression constructs. Kanamycin was used as for selection at 30 µg/ml.
Pathways including the biosynthetic and accessory genes were re-designed such that each gene was codon optimized for E. coli without Type IIS restriction sites (GeneArt CodonOptimizer), placed under T7 promoter (with lacO operator) and RBS parts from pET28a (Novagen), and arranged in the same direction in the order that they appear natively (
Commercially available reagents and chemicals were used. Fatty acid and amine substrates for the panel assay are listed separately (Table 3). Fatty acid substrates are prepared as 50 mM stock solutions in ethanol, neutralized with sodium hydroxide solution, stored at -80° C. prior to use. Amine substrates are prepared as 50 mM stock solutions in water (with pH adjusted to increase solubility), stored at -80° C. prior to use. IPTG was prepared as 1 M stock solution and stored at -20° C. CoA solution was freshly prepared from powder. PCR primers are ordered from Integrated DNA Technologies .
Genome datasets from the human gut was searched on the genome browser of the JGI-IMG database querying “Gastrointestinal tract” as the Sample Body Site and “Human” as a keyword. The metadata from search result was used to locate and download the sequencing data from either JGI GOLD or NCBI GenBank database. The resulting datasets were run on antiSMASH 3.0 using default parameters with ClusterFinder-based border prediction, but excluding putative pathways detected by ClusterFinder (low-confidence).22 The antiSMASH-detected pathways were blastn searched on the metagenomic reads of 148 fecal samples from HMP that passed QC assessment, retaining pathways that had at least two hits with e-value < 1X10-5 from the metagenomic reads spanning different stretches of the pathway. These were blastn searched, using the same cutoff filter as the previous step, on the mRNA reads from fecal samples of eight healthy subjects. The remaining pathways were run on BiG-SCAPE33 to generate a similarity network matrix file with a distance cutoff of 0.75 and visualized using Cytoscape. For analyzing prevalence, all three biosynthetic proteins from the eight NRPS pathways were combined as a single query and submitted on MetaQuery with default parameters, except with a minimum percent identity of 80.
Detection of Homologous Pathways in Non-Redundant Sequence DatabaseE. rectale condensation protein and adenylation protein was each used as a query for blastp search with default parameters. Upon removing hits that were different in protein size (>800 or <200 amino acids) from the top 1000 hits, the hit table from each was cross-examined using Python script for their co-occurrence in the same pathway based on proximity in NCBI accession number.
Phylogenetic Tree ConstructionFor pathway phylogeny, MUSCLE alignment was performed on the adenylation protein sequences using MacVector version 16. The tree was constructed from the alignment using Paraeggerthella hongkongensis adenylation protein (accession: WP_123191107) as an outgroup for rooting (Method: Neighbor Joining Method, Distance: Uncorrected, Best Tree Mode). For taxonomical phylogeny, NCBI taxon ID extracted from the GenBank annotation of each pathway was collected, which was submitted to phyloT for tree construction (https://phylot.biobyte.de/). The trees are visualized using iTOL.63
E. Coli In Vivo Heterologous ExpressionOvernight culture of pathway-harboring E coli in LB broth at 37° C. overnight (230 rpm) was diluted to fresh media the next morning. Multiple fermentation and extraction conditions were attempted. For IPTG induction, the culture was induced at either early, middle, or late log phase (OD600 = 0.2, 0.5, 0.8) and at final concentration of 0.2 or 0.5 mM IPTG. After induction, culture media was grown in LB or M9 minimal media. The induced culture was grown at 25 or 30° C. and extracted after 8, 16, or 40 hr. The culture was extracted with equal volume of methanol, mixed on the vortex, spun down to remove particulates, and subjected to analytical LCMS run. The condition with highest clone-specific compound production relative to background was defined as the best condition for subsequent in vivo production studies (OD600 = 0.8; 0.2 mM IPTG; LB after induction; 25° C.; 16 hr).
Analytical LCMS RunAnalytical LCMS was conducted using an Agilent 6130 quadrupole MS on a C18 reverse phase column (Phenomenex Luna 5 µm C18(2), 100 × 4.6 mm) with 1.0 mL/min flow rate and a gradient system of 90%:10% to 0%:100% water:acetonitrile with 0.1% formic acid for 15 min, followed by 2 min isocratic run at 100% acetonitrile (wash) and then 3 min at 90%:10% water:acetonitrile (re-equilibration).
Single-Gene Knockout Pathway CharacterizationPCR fragment with flanking Bsal site was made using primer pair ereCko-F/ereCko-R, ereAko-F/ ereAko-R, or ereTko-F/ereTko-R, which was then digested and ligated to generate a E. rectale pathway construct with the condensation, adenylation, or thiolation gene knockout, respectively. For pathway consisting of just the three biosynthetic genes, the primer pair ereC-F/ereA-R was used to amplify the appropriate fragment that was then cloned into pET28a. Each construct was transformed, cultured with the best condition (OD600 = 0.8; 0.2 mM IPTG; LB after induction; 25° C.; 16 hr), and analyzed like the wildtype pathway.
E. Coli In Vivo Substrate Feeding AssayNative E. rectale pathway-harboring E. coli was cultured with the best condition and as previously, except either octanoic acid (neutralized with sodium hydroxide) or tryptamine was added into the culture at a final concentration of 5 mM during IPTG induction. The extracts are analyzed as previously.
E. Coli In Vivo Compound CharacterizationLarge-scale fermentation of pathway-harboring E. coli (16 L) was conducted using the best condition. Culture was extracted with equal volume of ethyl acetate, and the organic layer was dried in vacuo. The extract was run on preparatory C18 reverse phase column (Phenomenex Luna 5 µm C18(2), 250 × 21.2 mm) with a gradient system of 90%:10% to 0%:100% water:acetonitrile with 0.1% acetic acid in 20 min at 10 mL/min. Major compound eluted with the 20%:80% water:acetonitrile fraction. Compound was then purified with a semi-prep C18 column (Phenomenex Luna 5 µm C18(2), 250 × 10 mm) with a gradient system of 70%:30% to 0%:100% water:methanol with 0.1% acetic acid in 30 min at 5 mL/min. The major compound eluted in the 45%:65% water:methanol fraction as a white powder (0.1 mg). HRMS acquired on Agilent 6530 Q-TOF and 1-D and 2-D NMR spectra collected on Bruker Avance II 600 were used to determine chemical structure (
Individual biosynthetic gene was PCR amplified from the synthesized construct using the primer set containing the gene name (nomenclature of “pathway source strain name abbreviation, followed by “NRPS domain type” (C, T, A).The amplified gene was cloned into pET28a and transformed into E. coli BL21(DE3). The exception was C. eutactus condensation protein, whose construct was sent to ABclonal Technology for custom protein expression and purification.
Protein PurificationExcept the C. eutactus condensation protein construct, the construct-harboring E. coli was grown in LB at 25° C. (230 rpm) to OD = 0.5, induced with IPTG at 0.5 mM final concentration, and grown at 16° C. (230 rpm) for 18 hr. The cells were pelleted at 4000 g for 20 min, resuspended in 10 mL Lysis Buffer (300 mM NaCl, 10 mM Imidazole, 50 mM Tris, pH 8.0) with EDTA-free Protease Inhibitors, and lysed using Q500 Qsonica sonicator with ⅛″ stepped microtip probe (45% amplitude, 5 min continuous). Upon centrifuging the lysed cells at 14,000 g for 20 min, the supernatant was added to pre-equilibrated Ni-NTA resin and rotated at 4° C. for 16 hr. The beads were spun down at 1000 g for 1 min, resuspended in 10 mL Wash Buffer (300 mM NaCl, 20 mM Imidazole, 50 mM Tris, pH 8.0). Upon transferring to a new tube, the beads were washed three times with 10 mL Wash Buffer. In a new tube, the beads were eluted with 2 mL of Elution Buffer (300 mM NaCl, 20 mM Imidazole, 250 mM Tris, pH 8.0) and dialyzed using Slide-A-Lyzer (3.5 K MWCO) against Dialysis Buffer (50 mM NaCl, 1 mM TCEP, 10% (v/v) glycerol). Protein purity was confirmed by 16% Tricine protein gel with SimplyBlue SafeStain.
In Vitro ReconstitutionReaction mixture was set up in 100 µL volume with 100 mM Tris, 10 mM MgCl2, 1 mM TCEP, 0.1 µM Sfp Synthase (New England Biolabs), 0.1 mM CoA, 5 mM ATP, 1 mM of each substrate (fatty acid, amine), and 1 µM of each biosynthetic protein (condensation, thiolation, adenylation) and proceeded at 23° C.
Pyrophosphate Measurement for Adenylation ActivityEnzchek Pyrophospate Assay Kit (Molecular Probes) was used for pyrophosphate detection as similarly done if previous studies.64 After a 2 hr reaction with adenylation and thiolation protein (no condensation), 10 µL of reaction sample was mixed with the kit solution containing MESG, phosphorylase, and pyrophosphatase in a 100 µL mixture following manufacturer protocol, incubated for 60 min at room temperature, spun down at 4000 g for 1 min to remove particulates, and transferred into Half Area 96 well UV microplate (Corning) for measurement of absorbance at 360 nm using BioTek Epoch Microplate Spectrophotometer, normalized to no adenylation enzyme control.
MS-Based Measurement for Adenylation and Condensation ActivityFor adenylation activity, adenylation and thiolation proteins (no condensation) were added with the query fatty acid substrate(s) and tryptamine as a UV-active chromophore. For condensation activity, a pair of reaction with all three biosynthetic proteins and all but without the condensation protein was set up with the query amine substrate(s) and the fatty acid that yielded the highest adenylation activity. The reaction was mixed with equal volume of methanol, spun down at 21,000 g for 1 min, and analyzed with the same analytical LCMS run as described previously. The product appeared as the major peak on the extracted-ion chromatogram (EIC) of the corresponding m/z in either positive or negative mode, without appearing on both the no substrate control and no enzyme control. The peak, either from absorbance at 280 nm for adenylation activity or MS EIC for condensation activity, was integrated using the software Mestrelab MNova 10.0. For condensation activity, the reaction sample with and without condensation protein was run one after the other, and the ratio of the two peak areas was calculated.
Substrate Panel AssayFor the panel assays (Table 3), the fatty acid substrates were subpooled into five: Subpool Fa = F1, 6, 10, 13, 17, 20, 21; Fb = F2, 9, 11, 16, 22, 24; Fc = F3, 5, 7, 12, 14, 18; FD = Fd, 8, 15, 19, 23, 25. The amine substrates were subpooled into six: Subpool Aa = A9, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34; Ab = A1, 2, 3, 4, 12, 16, 17, 20, 23; Ac = 5, 11, 14, 21, 35, 37, 39, 42, 43; Ad = A6, 7, 8, 10, 13, 15, 18, 19, 38; Ae = 22, 24, 25, 26, 40, 41, 47, 51, 53; Af = 36, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 52. First, reaction sample with C. eutactus proteins was analyzed over the course of ten different time points (
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This work began with a broad survey of biosynthetic pathways present in human gut microbiome genomic datasets (
The 336 transcribed pathways were organized using the software BiG-SCAPE which uses network-similarity algorithms to group the pathways into families48. The groups were then manually inspected to disregard the known families 8,40,49 . Eight pathways of particular interest, specific to Clostridia that are prevalent in the human gut, were identified (
The Clostridia-derived gene clusters encode three conserved biosynthetic genes (
These three biosynthetic genes are the only genes conserved across all Clostridia-derived pathways. However, some pathways also contained genes encoding a sterol transfer protein, an alpha/beta-hydrolase protein, or a PPTase (
Some of the strains in which the pathways are found have not been isolated or are not available from a strain bank. Therefore, the pathways were reconstituted in E. coli containing a genome-encoded IPTG-inducible T7 RNA polymerase (RNAP). Initially focusing on the eight human gut Clostridia-derived pathways, the C, T, and A genes were codon optimized and placed under the control of strong T7 promoters and ribosome binding sites (RBSs) (
To investigate the mechanism, variants of the E. rectale pathway were constructed where each gene was individually removed and the impact on pamitoeyl putrescine production was tested (
Each enzyme from the E. rectale pathway was then purified and reconstituted in vitro (
Deleting the C gene had no effect on the production of palmitoeyl putrescine in E. coli. This could be due to palmitoeyl putrescine being a shunt product that forms because E. coli lacks the appropriate substrate. To determine the substrate, a LC-MS assay was developed to measure the relative FAA product concentration formed by the in vitro reaction because condensation domains that utilize thiotemplated substrates catalyze ligation without ATP consumption. Different FAAs ionize at varying intensities, so ion abundance cannot be used for side-by-side comparisons of different amines. Instead, the fact that there is some background incorporation of amines (e.g., putrescine) was used, and the ratio of the LC-MS peaks in the presence and absence of the C protein was reported. Different amines are preferred, with tryptamine having 8-fold higher enzymatic incorporation (
A mechanism can be inferred from the in vivo heterologous expression data and in vitro reconstruction. The T protein serves as an acyl carrier protein, the A protein is a fatty acyl-acyl carrier protein synthetase (fatty acyl-CoA ligase), and the C protein is a N-fatty acyltransferase (
In addition to the three biosynthetic genes, most pathways also contained some combination of three additional conserved genes (genes labeled “Saccharide” in
The human gut lumen consists of fatty acids and amines from different sources that could be used by the enzymes to build FAAs. The in vitro system was expanded to determine the substrate specificities of the pathways. Rather than test all combinations, two assays were developed to test fatty acid and amine incorporation separately, where the other substrate is held constant. For the fatty acid screening to test adenylation activity, tryptamine is added to all the fatty acid reactions along with the purified T and A proteins and FAA formation is measured based on the UV absorbance (280 nm) of its indole chromophore. The reaction contained no C protein, thereby measuring FAA product as it is non-enzymatically released from the fatty acyl-T produced by the T and A proteins. The incorporation is presented as the ratio of the UV absorbance peak of the fatty acyl-tryptamine product with T and A proteins relative to that obtained from the control containing only T (
A panel of 25 fatty acids and 53 amines was collected, representative of biogenic sources present in the human gut, including bacteria, human cells, and diet (
The enzymes associated with each of eighteen pathways (eight from HMP gut metagenome plus ten from the nr database) were screened against the fatty acid and amide panels. The A protein showed a broad range of substrate specificity that is similar amongst the homologues (
In contrast, considering amine incorporation, the C protein has a much narrower substrate specificity (
The major products of each pathway can be deduced from the in vitro screens by pairing the most active fatty acid with the most active amine (
FAAs are known to modulate diverse biological functions by interacting with human GPCRs. The products of the FAA screen are either known GPCR ligands or appear to structurally mimic these molecules (
The four Clostridia FAAs were found to interact with a subset of GPCRs, with some overlapping activities. The glucose homeostasis receptor GPR119 and orphan GPR132 were activated by all of the FAAs tested. While the activity of GPR132 is high for the FAAs tested, GPR119 activity is notably higher for the three with the oleic acid moiety. GPR119 and GPR132 agonist activity have previously been reported for known FAAs, including gut commensal-derived commendamide and oleoyl serinol13. This suggests that GPR119 and GPR132 are promiscuous for diverse human and bacterial FAAs.
Oleoyl dopamine was found to interact with the most GPCRs, including the previously reported receptors (CNR1, DRD2s, GPR119) and those associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and inflammation. Oleoyl tyramine differs from oleoyl dopamine by only a single hydroxyl group and it shares activity on NPSRlb and PRLHR, which have been associated with IBD and colorectal cancer. Lauroyl tryptamine was also found to activate known monoamine receptors, specifically serotonin receptors (HTRs). Specific to this compound was the inhibition of EBI2/GPR183, associated with IBD, and P2RY4. Finally, oleoyl aminovaleric acid is structurally similar to the known human FAAs, arachidonyl and oleoyl GABA. Inhibition was observed for PTGER4, associated with IBD, and has been previously reported to be a target for a gut commensal FAA, acyloxyacyl glutamine13.
Lauroyl Tryptamine As Ebi2 InhibitorLauroyl tryptamine was selected to further validate its GPCR targets. The concentration-response curves were determined for the top three hits with activity/inhibition surpassing the empirical threshold: EBI2 antagonist (against 7a,25-diHC), P2RY4 antagonist (against UTP), and GPR132 agonist (
In contrast to EBI2, lauroyl tryptamine shows modest concentration-dependent inhibition on P2RY4 at the highest tested concentration. Although lauroyl tryptamine exhibited activity on GPR132 with and EC50 of 1.45 µM, free lauric acid also showed activity on GPR132 with EC50 of 25.2 µM. Therefore, the hits against P2RY4 and GPR132 may have been false positives.
FAA Production by Eubacterium RectaleExperiments were performed to determine whether the FAAs identified through the in vitro screen are produced by the gut commensal strain containing the native gene cluster. Doing so is not always possible because the pathways are obtained from metagenomic data and the original species can be unobtainable. However, two native Clostridia strains were identified in a public repository (Leibniz Institute DSMZ), M. formatexigens (DSM 14469) and E. rectale (DSM 17629), and tested these for the production of the FAAs identified in vitro. These strains were cultivated under different laboratory conditions, initially without fed substrates. LC-MS analysis of extract from E. rectale grown in RCM media revealed the presence of lauroyl tryptamine (titer of 0.04 mg/L), the major compound identified from the in vitro expression of the E. rectale-derived pathway (
The culture conditions may not be reflective of the environmental niche occupied by the bacteria in the human gut. Directly measuring the production of a FAA in this environment would be difficult. Instead, we analyzed published metatranscriptomic data obtained from human isolates47. The reads from RNA-sequencing datasets from the stool samples of eight healthy subjects were searched with the E. rectale pathway as the query sequence. Transcriptional reads across the FAA pathway were detected in three out of the eight human samples (subX319146421, subX311245214, subX316701492). Transcription was further analyzed for subject subX316701492 by mapping the reads to a 80 kb region of the E. rectale genome centered on the FAA pathway (
E. coli DH10B (C3019, New England Biolabs, Ipswich, MA) was used for routine cloning. E. coli BAP1 containing T7 DNA polymerase and Sfp phosphopantetheinyl transferase was used for heterologous expression of engineered pathways55. E. coli BL21(DE3) (CMC0016, Millipore Sigma, St. Louis, MO) was used for protein expression and pathway expression in the absence of Sfp. Vector pET28a (69864, Millipore Sigma) was used as backbone for all pathway and protein expression constructs (
Pathways including the biosynthetic and accessory genes were re-designed such that each gene was codon optimized for E. coli without Type IIS restriction sites (GeneArt CodonOptimizer, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA), placed under T7 promoter (with lacO operator) and RBS parts from pET28a, and arranged in the same direction in the order that they appear natively (
Fatty acid and amine substrates for the panel assay are summarized in Table 3. Fatty acid substrates were prepared as 50 mM stock solutions in ethanol neutralized with sodium hydroxide solution, and stored at -80° C. prior to use. Amine substrates were prepared as 50 mM stock solutions in water, and stored at -80° C. prior to use.
Computational Detection of Clostridia NRPS PathwaysGenome datasets from the human gut were searched on the genome browser of the JGI-IMG database querying “Gastrointestinal tract” as the Sample Body Site and “Human” as a keyword. The metadata from search result was used to locate and download the sequencing data from either JGI GOLD or NCBI GenBank database. The resulting datasets were run on antiSMASH 3.0 using default parameters with ClusterFinder-based border prediction, but excluding putative pathways detected by ClusterFinder (low-confidence). The antiSMASH-detected pathways were blastn searched on the metagenomic reads of 148 fecal samples from HMP that passed QC assessment, retaining pathways that had at least two hits with e-value < 1X10-5 from the metagenomic reads spanning different stretches of the pathway. These were blastn searched, using the same cutoff filter as the previous step, on the mRNA reads from fecal samples of eight healthy subjects. The remaining pathways were run on BiG-SCAPE to generate a similarity network matrix file with a distance cutoff of 0.75 and visualized using Cytoscape48. For 16S rRNA-based phylogenic tree, 16S rRNA sequences of the strains were collected from NCBI database. The tree was constructed from the sequences using MacVector version 16 (Method: MUSCLE alignment, Neighbor Joining Method, Distance: Uncorrected, Best Tree Mode).
MetaQuery SearchFor analyzing prevalence, the condensation domain protein sequence for each of the pathways was used as the query for MetaQuery search with default parameters, except with a minimum percent identity of 9851.
Pathway Homology SearchE. rectale condensation protein (NCBI: WP_015516887) and adenylation protein (NCBI: WP_015516889) were each used as a query for blastp search with default parameters. Upon removing hits that were different in protein size (>800 or <200 amino acids) from the top 1,000 hits, the hit table from each was cross-examined using Python script for their co-occurrence in the same pathway based on proximity in NCBI accession number.
Biosynthetic Enzyme Homology SearchThe E. rectale biosynthetic protein sequences EreC and EreA were individually blastp searched on UniProt (EMBL-EBI, United Kingdom) using default parameters and “UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot” of characterized proteins as the target database.
Heterologous Expression of Clusters in E. ColiTo test for in vivo compound production under a comprehensive set of fermentation conditions, a total of 24 cultures were set up that each make up the possible combinations of the following four parameters: timing of IPTG induction, IPTG concentration, culture media, and pathway expression temperature. Overnight cultures of pathway-harboring E. coli in LB broth at 230 rpm and 37° C. (MS012NF, Multitron Standard, INFORS HT, Bottmingen, Switzerland) were diluted 200-fold the next morning to 4 mL fresh LB media in partially unscrewed 50 mL Conical tube (352098, Thermo Fisher Scientific). Upon growth to one of three IPTG induction times (corresponding to OD600 = 0.2, 0.5, and 0.8, respectively), the culture was pelleted at 4,000 g and 4° C. for 3 min (75004537, Multifuge X3 FR, Thermo Fisher Scientific). The pellet was resuspended in 4 mL of one of two fresh culture media (LB or M9) at one of two IPTG concentrations (0.2 or 0.5 mM) for induction. The culture was grown with shaking (230 rpm) at one of two temperatures (25 or 30° C.). To monitor compound production over time, 1 mL sample was removed from each of 24 cultures after three different timepoints (8, 16, or 40 hr). Each sample was immediately extracted with 1 mL of methanol (BJLC230, VWR), mixed with the vortexer at maximum speed for 30 sec (SI-0236, Vortex-Genie 2, Scientific Industries, Bohemia, NY), and pelleted at 20,000 g at room temperature for 1 min (022620401, Centrifuge 5424, Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany). A 100 uL aliquot of the supernatant was injected for analytical LC-MS run (below). Clone-specific compound production was identified by visual inspection of clone-specific peaks in the chromatograph of electrospray ionization (ESI)+ total ion current (TIC), ESI- TIC, and diode array detector (DAD) total wavelength using software ChemStation (version 1.9, Agilent) and MestReNova (version 10, Mestrelab Research, Compostela, Spain).
For side-by-side compound production comparison of E. rectale pathway with gene-knockout variants or with fed substrate, each LCMS analytical sample was prepared following the same protocol, but only with a single fermentation condition and at a single extraction time point. In brief, the freshly inoculated 4 mL culture from overnight was grown to OD600 = 0.8. The pelleted culture was resuspended in fresh LB containing 0.2 mM IPTG. For substrate feeding assay, the IPTG-containing LB also included 5 mM octanoic acid (neutralized with sodium hydroxide) or tryptamine. The culture was grown with shaking at 25° C. and extracted after 16 hr. The presence of expected product (i.e. palmitoleoyl putrescine, octanoyl putrescine, palmitoleoyl tryptamine) was identified by inspection of a clone-specific peak in the ESI+ extracted ion chromatograph (EIC) corresponding to the mass-to-charge ratio (m/z, 0.3 Da tolerance) of the protonated ion.
Analytical LC-MSAnalytical LCMS was conducted using an Agilent (Agilent, Santa Clara, CA) 1260 Infinity system with 6130 quadrupole MS, binary pump (G1312B), and DAD (G1315D). The sample was run on a C18 reverse phase column [Luna 5 um C18(2), 100 × 4.6 mm] (00D-4252-E0, Phenomenex, Torrance, CA) with 1.0 mL/min flow rate and a gradient system of 90%:10% to 0%:100% water (WX0001, Millipore Sigma) : acetonitrile (BJLC015, VWR) with 0.1% formic acid (5330020050, Millipore Sigma) for 15 min, followed by 2 min isocratic run at 100% acetonitrile (wash) and then 3 min at 90%:10% water:acetonitrile (re-equilibration).
E. Coli In Vivo Compound CharacterizationLarge-scale fermentation of pathway-harboring E. coli (16 L) was conducted. Overnight culture was diluted 200-fold to 1 L fresh LB in 4 L Erlenmeyer flasks (10545-845, VWR), and grown at 200 rpm and 30° C. (Multitron Standard). At OD600 of around 0.4, the temperature was lowered to 25° C. The culture at OD600 = 0.8 and 25° C. was then added with IPTG at a final concentration of 0.2 mM and grown with shaking at 25° C. for 16 hr. The 16 L culture was extracted with equal volume of ethyl acetate (JT9282, VWR), 1 L at a time in separatory funnel (4301-2000, Thermo Fisher Scientific). The organic layer was concentrated in vacuo using rotary evaporator (11100C2102, Rotavapor R-100, Buchi, Flawil, Switzerland), transferred to glass vial (66030-678, VWR), and dried using SpeedVac concentrator (SPD2010-230, Savant SpeedVac, Thermo Fisher Scientific). Preparatory LCMS was conducted using an Agilent (Agilent, Santa Clara, CA) 1260 Infinity system with quaternary pump (G1311B), DAD (G1315D), and fraction collector (G1364B). The extract resuspended in 5 mL acetonitrile was run on preparatory C18 reverse phase column [Luna 5 um C18(2), 250 × 21.2 mm] (00G-4252-P0-AX, Phenomenex) and a gradient system of 90%:10% to 0%:100% water:acetonitrile with 0.1% acetic acid (A11350, Thermo Fisher Scientific) in 20 min at 10 mL/min. Major compound eluted with the 20%:80% water:acetonitrile fractions, which were pooled and dried in vacuo. Upon resuspension in 2 mL acetonitrile, the compound was then purified over the course of ten injections (200 uL at a time) on a semi-prep C18 column [Luna 5 um C18(2), 250 × 10 mm] (00G-4252-N0, Phenomenex) and a gradient system of 70%:30% to 0%:100% water:methanol with 0.1% acetic acid in 30 min at 5 mL/min. The major compound eluted in the 45%:65% water:methanol fraction as a white powder (0.1 mg). HRMS acquired on 6530 Q-TOF (Agilent) and 1-D and 2-D NMR spectra in chloroform-d (151823, Millipore Sigma) collected on Avance II 600 (Bruker, Billerica, MA) were used to determine chemical structure (
The individual genes were cloned into the pET28a plasmid system shown in
Upon centrifuging the lysed cells at 14,000 g for 20 min (75004520, Sorvall Legend XTR Thermo Fisher Scientific), the supernatent was transferred to a new 50 mL Conical tube, mixed with 1 mL of pre-equilibrated Ni-NTA resin (88221, Thermo Fisher Scientific), and rotated using Tube Rotator at 20 rpm and 4° C. for 16 hr (1205R81, Scilogex, Rocky Kill, CT). The bead slurry was spun down at 1,000 g and 4° C. for 1 min (Multifuge X3 FR), and resuspended in 10 mL Wash Buffer, containing 200 mM NaCl, 20 mM Imidazole, and 50 mM Tris, pH 8.0. Upon transferring to a new 15 mL Conical tube (352097, Millipore Sigma), the bead slurry was washed twice with 10 mL Wash Buffer by spinning down at 1,000 g and 4° C. for 1 min. The bead slurry was then resuspended in 2 mL Wash Buffer, transferred to new 2 mL microcentrifuge tubes (022600044, Eppendorf), and spun down at 5000 g and 4° C. for 1 min (Centrifuge 5424R, Eppendorf). The bead slurry was added with 2 mL of Elution Buffer, consisting of 200 mM NaCl, 250 mM imidazole, and 50 mM Tris, ph 8.0, and spun down at 20,000 g and 4° C. for 1 min. The supernatant containing the purified protein was dialyzed using Slide-A-Lyzer, 3.5 K MWCO (66333, Thermo Fisher), in 500 uL aliquot per cassette. Each cassette was submerged at 4° C. for 6 hr in 14 mL of Dialysis Buffer, consisting of 50 mM NaCl, 1 mM TCEP (TCEP, Gold Biotechnology), and 10% glycerol (AB00751, American Bioanalytical). The buffer was discarded, changed to a fresh Dialysis Buffer, and left at 4° C. for another 16 hr. The dialyzed protein sample was pooled from the cassettes, distributed in 20 uL aliquots for single freeze-cycle use, and frozen for storage at -20° C. Protein purity was confirmed by the presence of a single band corresponding to the expected size on Novex 16% Tricine protein gel (EC66952BOX, Thermo Fisher) in Tricine running buffer (LC1675, Thermo Scientific) stained with SimplyBlue SafeStain (LC6060, Thermo Fisher) alongside with Precision Plus Protein ladder (1610374, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Hercules, CA) (Supplementary
The EnzChek Pyrophospate Assay Kit (E6646, Thermo Fisher) was used for pyrophosphate detection to measure adenylation activity. A pair of 100 µL in vitro reaction samples were prepared, one with E. rectale adenylation and thiolation proteins (no condensation) and the other with thiolation protein only, each protein at 1 µM final concentration. The protein(s) were added with query substrate at 1 mM final concentration (palmitoleic acid, palmitic acid, putrescine, ornithine, arginine, agmatine, cadaverine, or lysine) in an in vitro reaction mix, consisting of 100 mM Tris, 10 mM MgCl2 (JT2448, VWR), 1 mM TCEP, 0.1 uM Sfp Synthase (P9302, New England Biolabs), 0.1 mM Coenzyme A (951-50, Lee Biosolutions, Maryland Heights, MO), and 5 mM ATP (A-081, Gold Biotechnology). After 60 min incubation at 23° C., 10 uL of each reaction sample was mixed with kit solution containing 0.2 mM MESG dye, 1 U mL-1 purine nucleoside phosphorylase, 0.03 U mL-1 inorganic pyrophosphatase, and 1 x reaction buffer in 100 µL total volume. Upon transferring into microplate wells (CLS3894, Millipore Sigma), the sample was mixed in plate shaker at 900 rpm for 30 sec (I10103P, Multitron Pro, INFORS HT). After incubation at room temperature for 60 min, the plate was spun down at 4,000 g for 1 min (Multifuge X3 FR) to remove particulates. Upon transferring the supernatant into half-area microplate wells (CLS3679, Millipore Sigma), absorbance of each well at 360 nm was read using Synergy H1 Microplate Spectrophotometer (8041000, BioTek, Winooski, VT). Absorbance from each sample was subtracted by the mean triplicate absorbance of blank water. The absorbance from reaction with adenylation and thiolation proteins was normalized to thiolation protein only control. The data was taken in triplicate per day, and the average of the mean triplicate normalized absorbance conducted on three different days was reported.
LC-MS Detection of T Protein Intermediate PeptideA pair of 1000 µL in vitro reaction samples were prepared with 1 µM final concentration of the E. rectale adenylation protein, 1 µM of the thiolation protein, and 1 mM lauric acid in an in vitro reaction mix consisting of 100 mM Tris, 10 mM MgCl2, 1 mM TCEP, 0.1 uM Sfp, and 0.1 mM Coenzyme A. ATP at 5 mM final concentration was added to only one of the sample. After 60 min incubation at 23° C., the proteins in the reaction mixtures were denatured and digested with trypsin (V511A, Promega, Madison, WI) following manufacturer’s protocol, but at pH 7.0 to prevent base-catalyzed hydrolysis of the thiotemplated substrate. In brief, the mixtures were incubated at 90° C. for 20 min in 6M guanidine HCL (G3272, Sigma-Aldrich) and 1M DTT (D9779, Sigma-Aldrich) in Tris-HCl (50 mM pH 7.0) before cooling to room temperature. Upon 6-fold dilution of the solution with Tris-HCl (50 mM pH 7.0) and CalCl2 (1 mM) down to 0.96 M of guanidine HCl, the protein solutions were added with trypsin to a final protease:protein ratio of 1:50 (w/w) for 24 hr at 37° C. The resulting mixtures were cleaned using a C-18 Sep-Pak column (WAT0519, Waters, Milford, MA). For peptide analysis, the samples were injected on Agilent 6530 qTOF MS in ESI+ mode coupled to Agilent 1290 Infinity UHPLC system. The samples were run on AdvanceBio Peptide Mapping column [C18, 2.7 um, 120 Å, 150 x 2.1 mm] (653750-902, Agilent) with a 0.2 mL/min flow rate and a gradient system of 97%:3% to 35%:65% water:acetonitrile with 0.1% formic acid for 75 min. Sequences for peptides were identified using Agilent MassHunter BioConfirm (version 8) with a mass tolerance of 0.25 Da, MS and MSE mass match tolerance of 30.0 ppm and trypsin digest with 0 missed cleavages.
MS-Based Measurement for Condensation ActivityA pair of 100 µL in vitro reaction samples were prepared, one with E. rectale condensation, adenylation, and thiolation proteins and the other with adenylation and thiolation proteins only, each protein at 1 µM final concentration. The proteins were added with query amine at 1 mM final concentration (putrescine, ornithine, phenylalanine, tryptophan, tyrosine, phenylethylamine, tryptamine, or tyramine) and 1 mM of fatty acid (palmitoleic acid) in an in vitro reaction mix (above). After 90 min incubation at 23° C., each sample was extracted with 1 mL of methanol, mixed with the vortexter at maximum speed for 30 sec (SI-0236, Vortex-Genie 2), pelleted at 20,000 g and room temperature for 1 min. A 100 ul of the supernatant was injected for analytical LC-MS run (above). Using MestReNova (version 10), the presence of FAA product was identified by inspection of a clone-specific peak in the ESI+ and ESI-extracted ion chromatograph (EIC) corresponding to the mass-to-charge ratio (m/z, 0.3 Da tolerance) of the protonated or deprotonated ion. Automated trace baseline correction, peak detection, and peak integration were applied by MestReNova. The peak area (ESI+ or ESI-depending on the amine substrate) from reaction with condensation, adenylation and thiolation proteins was normalized to adenylation and thiolation proteins only control. The data was taken in triplicate per day, and the average of the mean triplicate normalized peak area conducted on three different days was reported.
Substrate Panel AssayAdenylation and condensation activities from the eight HMP-derived pathways were measured on a panel of 25 fatty acids and 53 amines, respectively. Fatty acids were mixed with equimolar amounts to prepare five subpools, such that no two compounds sharing the same mass are in the same subpool: subpool Fa = F1, 6, 10, 13, 17, 20, 21; Fb = F2, 9, 11, 16, 22, 24; Fc = F3, 5, 7, 12, 14, 18; FD = Fd, 8, 15, 19, 23, 25 (
For MS-based measurement of adenylation activity, a pair of 100 µL in vitro reaction samples were prepared, one with adenylation and thiolation proteins (no condensation) and the other with thiolation protein only, each protein at 1 µM final concentration. The protein(s) were added with one of the fatty acid subpool (Fa, Fb, Fc, or Fd) at a final concentration of 1 mM total fatty acid and tryptamine at a final concentration of 10 mM in an in vitro reaction mix (above). After 60 min incubation at 23° C., each sample was extracted with 1 mL of methanol, mixed with the vortexter at maximum speed for 30 sec (SI-0236, Vortex-Genie 2), and pelleted at 20,000 g and room temperature for 1 min. A 100 uL of the supernatant was injected for analytical LC-MS run (above). Using MestReNova (version 10), the presence of fatty acyl tryptamine product from each fatty acid substrate was identified by inspection of a clone-specific peak in the ESI+ extracted ion chromatograph (EIC) corresponding to the mass-to-charge ratio (m/z, 0.3 Da tolerance) of the protonated ion. The corresponding peak at the same retention time was identified on the DAD chromatogram at 280 nm (0.5 nm tolerance). Automated trace baseline correction, peak detection, and peak integration were applied by MestReNova. The DAD chromatogram peak area from reaction with adenylation and thiolation proteins was normalized to thiolation protein only control. The data was taken in triplicate per day, and the average of the mean triplicate normalized peak area conducted on three different days was reported.
The MS-based measurement of condensation activity follows similar steps as described (above). A pair of 100 µL in vitro reactions were prepared, one with condensation, adenylation, and thiolation proteins and the other with adenylation and thiolation protein only, each protein at 1 µM final concentration. The proteins were added with one of the amine subpool (Aa, Ab, Ac, Ad, Ae, Af, Ag, Ah, or Ai) at a final concentration of 1 mM total amine and fatty acid that provided highest adenylation activity (oleic acid for C. eutactus, M. formatexigens, R. bacterium, B. sp. Marseille-P2398, B. wexlerae, L. str. LC2019, C. sp. L2-50, C. sp. CAG:253, and B. sp. An81 pathways; α-linolenic acid for R. albus, L. clostridioforme, B. producta, C. celatum, and C. sp. 1_7_47AA pathways; lauric acid for C. eutactus, C. sp. CAG:413, and L. str. KH1P17 pathways; capric acid for R. sp. CAG:488 pathway) at a final concentration of 1 mM in an in vitro reaction mix (above). After 90 min incubation at 23° C., each sample was extracted with methanol and prepped for 100 uL analytical LC-MS run as described (above). Using MestReNova (version 10), the presence of FAA product for each amine substrate was identified by inspection of a clone-specific peak in the ESI+ and ESI- extracted ion chromatograph (EIC) corresponding to the mass-to-charge ratio (m/z, 0.3 Da tolerance) of the protonated or deprotonated ion. Automated trace baseline correction, peak detection, and peak integration were applied by MestReNova. The peak area (ESI+ or ESI- depending on the amine substrate) from reaction with condensation, adenylation and thiolation proteins was normalized to adenylation and thiolation proteins only control. The data was taken in triplicate per day, and the average of the mean triplicate normalized peak area conducted on three different days was reported.
With 1 mM each of lauric acid and tryptamine as substrates, and 1 µM each of the biosynthetic proteins from the E. rectale system, the reaction reached steady state at 18% conversion of lauric acid and 15% conversion of tryptamine after 8 hours at 23° C.
The identities of the major product determined from the in vitro assay (oleoyl dopamine, oleoyl tyramine, lauroyl tryptamine, oleoyl aminovaleric acid, α-linolenoyl phenylethylamine, and caproyl tryptamine) and α-linolenoyl homocysteine were confirmed for each by setting up an in vitro reaction with the specific pair of substrates. The resultant FAA product was analyzed by injecting the sample for analytical LC-MS alongside with a structurally verified standard, obtained either by purchasing from Cayman Chemical (Ann Arbor, MI; oleoyl dopamine, 10115), or having them chemically synthesized by KareBay Biochem (Monmouth Junction, NJ).
The reaction time used in the adenylation and condensation activity assays was based on the time course of ten different time points. In brief, the MS-based measurements of adenylation and condensation activity were conducted as described above with C. euctacus proteins. However, a pair of 1,200 µL in vitro reactions were prepared, and instead of a single timepoint, a 100 µL aliquot was collected after 10, 20, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, 240, 480, and 960 min of incubation at 23° C., extracted, and injected for analytical LC-MS run. The data was taken in triplicate per day. The time course graph was plotted for the average of the mean triplicate normalized peak area run on three different days and shows that the 60 min and 90 min timepoint for adenylation and condensation activity assay, respectively, resulted in the largest difference between the highest activity and the rest (
Marvinbryantia formatexigens DSM 14469 and Eubacterium rectale DSM 17629 were grown in an anaerobic chamber (1200001, Coy Laboratory Products, Grass Lack, MI) with an incubator (6100000, Coy Laboratory Products). The strains were inoculated in one of the following 10 pre-reduced liquid media: RCM (BD218081, Becton Dickinson, Franklin Lakes, NJ), BHI (M210, HiMedia, Mumbai, India), GAM (M1801, HiMedia), TSB (BD211825, Becton Dickinson), Casman (M766, HiMedia), WCABB (M863, HiMedia), Columbia (BD294420, Becton Dickinson), ABB (M1636, HiMedia), YCFAC (AS-680, Anaerobe Systems, Morgan Hill, CA), PYEG (AG24H, Hardy Diagnostics, Santa Maria, CA). Media without reducing agent L-cysteine in the ingredients were supplemented with L-cysteine at a final concentration of 0.05% (w/v). Each culture was grown as 2 mL volume in 14 mL Falcon culture tube (352059, Corning) at 37° C. for 2 days. The culture was extracted in the chamber with 2 mL of methanol and mixed by vigorous shaking (BJLC230, VWR). Upon taking the sample out from the chamber, the mixture was pelleted at 20,000 g for 1 min (022620401, Centrifuge 5424). A 100 uL aliquot of the supernatant was injected for analytical LC-MS run, as previously described. The presence of lauroyl tryptamine in E. rectale and oleoyl dopamine in M. formatexigens was checked by running alongside the synthesized standard and inspecting the ESI+ EIC corresponding to the m/z (0.3 Da tolerance) of the protonated ion.
For E. rectale feeding experiment, 20 µL of the 2-day E. rectale culture in RCM was inoculated in 2 mL of fresh RCM with 0.2 mM of tryptamine and 0.1 mM of the fatty acid substrate (lauric acid, linoleic acid, oleic acid, docosahexaenoic acid, or α-linolenic acid), and grown for an additional 2 days at 37° C. The culture was extracted and analyzed by LC-MS in the same way as above, with methanol extraction and injection of a 100 uL aliquot. Standards for linoleoyl, oleoyl, docosahexaenoyl, and α-linolenoyl tryptamine were made by adding the appropriate substrates in the in vitro system with purified E. rectale enzymes, and were run alongside to confirm presence in the E. rectale extracts (ESI+ EIC).
For product yield measurements, a standard curve for fatty acyl tryptamine was constructed based on the peak area of the DAD chromatogram at 280 nm (0.5 nm tolerance) with 100 µg, 10 µg, 1 µg, 100 ng, 10 ng, 1 ng, 100 pg, 10 pg, and 1 pg injections (in triplicates) of the chemically synthesized lauroyl tryptamine standard. Automated trace baseline correction, peak detection, and peak integration were applied by MestReNova.
MetatranscriptomicsThe E. rectale FAA pathway was first used as a query sequence for blastn search with default parameters on NCBI SRA datasets. A 80 kb region of the E. rectale genome centered at the FAA pathway was obtained from the NCBI nr database (accession: FP929042, region 2065556-2145556). The metatranscriptomic reads file (fastq) from subject subX316701492 was obtained from the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) database (accession: SRX247340). Upon loading the files to Geneious Prime (version 11), the reads were mapped onto the 80 kb region as the reference sequence (Geneious Mapper, Medium-Low Sensitivity/Fast).
Chemical SynthesisThe FAA products lauroyl tryptamine, oleoyl tyramine, oleoyl aminovaleric acid, α-linolenoyl phenylethylamine, caproyl tryptamine, α-linolenoyl homocysteine, and palmitoeyl putrescine were chemically synthesized by KareBay Biochem (Monmouth Junction, NJ). Oleoyl dopamine was acquired from Cayman Chemical (Ann Arbor, MI).
GPCR ScreeningThe four human gut metagenome-derived major products (oleoyl dopamine, oleoyl tyramine, lauroyl tryptamine, oleoyl aminovaleric acid) were obtained from commercial source or chemical synthesis and confirmed to be identical to in vitro products. They were sent to DiscoverX (Fremont, CA) for a cell-based assay on a panel of 168 GPCRs with known ligands (gpcrMAX) in both agonist and antagonist mode, as well as 73 orphan GPCRs (orphanMAX) in agonist mode. Chemiluminescence indicating P-arrestin recruitment was used as output to measure agonist and antagonist activity of each compound on each GPCR at 10 micromolar concentration. Agonist mode measures % activity relative to the baseline value (0% activity) and maximum value activated by a known ligand (100% activation). For orphan GPCR, twofold increase in value over baseline is set as 100% activation. Antagonist mode measures % inhibition of target GPCR by the compound in the presence of a known ligand, relative to the value at the EC80 of the known ligand (0% inhibition) and basal value (100% inhibition). DiscoverX provides an empirical threshold value of 30%, 35%, or 50% for GPCR agonist, GPCR antagonist, or orphan GPCR agonist, respectively, where activity/inhibition higher than the threshold indicate that the interaction is potentially significant.
Concentration-Response CurveLauroyl tryptamine, tryptamine, and lauric acid were sent to DiscoverX for a cell-based assay on EBI2 antagonist mode, P2RY4 antagonist mode, and GPR132 agonist mode. The experimental setup and output are the same as the panel assay, except % inhibition/activity was measured on ten concentration points (100, 33, 11, 3.7, 1.2, 0.41, 0.14, 0.046, 0.015, 0.0051 µM) to plot the concentration-response curve and determine IC50 or EC50.
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All of the features disclosed in this specification may be combined in any combination. Each feature disclosed in this specification may be replaced by an alternative feature serving the same, equivalent, or similar purpose. Thus, unless expressly stated otherwise, each feature disclosed is only an example of a generic series of equivalent or similar features.
From the above description, one skilled in the art can easily ascertain the essential characteristics of the present invention, and without departing from the spirit and scope thereof, can make various changes and modifications of the invention to adapt it to various usages and conditions. Thus, other embodiments are also within the claims.
EQUIVALENTSWhile several inventive embodiments have been described and illustrated herein, those of ordinary skill in the art will readily envision a variety of other means and/or structures for performing the function and/or obtaining the results and/or one or more of the advantages described herein, and each of such variations and/or modifications is deemed to be within the scope of the inventive embodiments described herein. More generally, those skilled in the art will readily appreciate that all parameters, dimensions, materials, and configurations described herein are meant to be exemplary and that the actual parameters, dimensions, materials, and/or configurations will depend upon the specific application or applications for which the inventive teachings is/are used. Those skilled in the art will recognize, or be able to ascertain using no more than routine experimentation, many equivalents to the specific inventive embodiments described herein. It is, therefore, to be understood that the foregoing embodiments are presented by way of example only and that, within the scope of the appended claims and equivalents thereto, inventive embodiments may be practiced otherwise than as specifically described and claimed. Inventive embodiments of the present disclosure are directed to each individual feature, system, article, material, kit, and/or method described herein. In addition, any combination of two or more such features, systems, articles, materials, kits, and/or methods, if such features, systems, articles, materials, kits, and/or methods are not mutually inconsistent, is included within the inventive scope of the present disclosure.
All definitions, as defined and used herein, should be understood to control over dictionary definitions, definitions in documents incorporated by reference, and/or ordinary meanings of the defined terms.
All references, patents and patent applications disclosed herein are incorporated by reference with respect to the subject matter for which each is cited, which in some cases may encompass the entirety of the document.
The indefinite articles “a” and “an,” as used herein in the specification and in the claims, unless clearly indicated to the contrary, should be understood to mean “at least one.”
The phrase “and/or,” as used herein in the specification and in the claims, should be understood to mean “either or both” of the elements so conjoined, i.e., elements that are conjunctively present in some cases and disjunctively present in other cases. Multiple elements listed with “and/or” should be construed in the same fashion, i.e., “one or more” of the elements so conjoined. Other elements may optionally be present other than the elements specifically identified by the “and/or” clause, whether related or unrelated to those elements specifically identified. Thus, as a non-limiting example, a reference to “A and/or B”, when used in conjunction with open-ended language such as “comprising” can refer, in one embodiment, to A only (optionally including elements other than B); in another embodiment, to B only (optionally including elements other than A); in yet another embodiment, to both A and B (optionally including other elements); etc.
As used herein in the specification and in the claims, “or” should be understood to have the same meaning as “and/or” as defined above. For example, when separating items in a list, “or” or “and/or” shall be interpreted as being inclusive, i.e., the inclusion of at least one, but also including more than one, of a number or list of elements, and, optionally, additional unlisted items. Only terms clearly indicated to the contrary, such as “only one of” or “exactly one of,” or, when used in the claims, “consisting of,” will refer to the inclusion of exactly one element of a number or list of elements. In general, the term “or” as used herein shall only be interpreted as indicating exclusive alternatives (i.e. “one or the other but not both”) when preceded by terms of exclusivity, such as “either,” “one of,” “only one of,” or “exactly one of.” “Consisting essentially of,” when used in the claims, shall have its ordinary meaning as used in the field of patent law.
As used herein in the specification and in the claims, the phrase “at least one,” in reference to a list of one or more elements, should be understood to mean at least one element selected from any one or more of the elements in the list of elements, but not necessarily including at least one of each and every element specifically listed within the list of elements and not excluding any combinations of elements in the list of elements. This definition also allows that elements may optionally be present other than the elements specifically identified within the list of elements to which the phrase “at least one” refers, whether related or unrelated to those elements specifically identified. Thus, as a non-limiting example, “at least one of A and B” (or, equivalently, “at least one of A or B,” or, equivalently “at least one of A and/or B”) can refer, in one embodiment, to at least one, optionally including more than one, A, with no B present (and optionally including elements other than B); in another embodiment, to at least one, optionally including more than one, B, with no A present (and optionally including elements other than A); in yet another embodiment, to at least one, optionally including more than one, A, and at least one, optionally including more than one, B (and optionally including other elements); etc.
It should also be understood that, unless clearly indicated to the contrary, in any methods claimed herein that include more than one step or act, the order of the steps or acts of the method is not necessarily limited to the order in which the steps or acts of the method are recited.
Claims
1-38. (canceled)
39. A vector for the production of fatty acid amides, comprising
- genes, wherein each of the genes is under the control of a regulatory element, wherein each of the genes is derived from a gut microbiome-derived bacterium, and wherein the genes encode at least a fatty acyl transferase, an acyl carrier protein, and a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase.
40. The vector of claim 39, wherein the regulatory element is an inducible promoter.
41. The vector of claim 39, wherein the regulatory element is a constitutive promoter.
42. The vector of claim 39, wherein the regulatory element is a repressible promoter.
43. The vector of claim 39, wherein the regulatory element comprises a T7 promoter.
44. The vector of claim 43, wherein the vector further encodes a T7 RNA polymerase.
45. The vector of claim 39, further comprising a ribosomal binding site.
46. The vector of claim 39, wherein the genes are codon-optimized.
47. The vector of claim 39, wherein the genes are open reading frames.
48. The vector of claim 39, wherein the genes are codon-optimized for production in E. coli.
49. The vector of claim 39, wherein the gut microbiome-derived bacterium is from Clostridia.
50. The vector of claim 39, wherein the genes also encode a hydrolase.
51. The vector of claim 39, wherein the genes also encode a lipid transfer protein.
52. The vector of claim 39, wherein the genes also encode a glycosyltransferase.
53. The vector of claim 39, wherein the genes encode Sfp 4′-phosphopantetheinyl transferase.
54. The vector of claim 39, wherein the genes are in a single operon.
55-74. (canceled)
75. An engineered cell comprising the vector of claim 39.
76. A method of producing fatty acid amides, the method comprising:
- contacting a composition, comprising one or more exogenous fatty acids and one or more amines, with a set of biosynthetic enzymes which are human gut microbiome-derived clostridia biosynthetic enzymes in an effective amount to produce a fatty acid amide, wherein the set of biosynthetic enzymes comprise a fatty acyl transferase, an acyl carrier protein, and a fatty acyl-ACP synthetase.
Type: Application
Filed: Jul 12, 2022
Publication Date: May 11, 2023
Applicant: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA)
Inventors: Christopher A. Voigt (Belmont, MA), Fang-Yuan Chang (Somerville, MA)
Application Number: 17/812,156
