Retro technique advances modern bacterial engineering for bioenergy

Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists had a problem mapping the genomes ofbacteria to better understand the origins of their physical traits and improve their function for bioenergy production The method they used for genetic mapping of plant feedstock for fuels relied on creating and analyzing diverse, sexually recombined variant, whilebacteria generally reproduce asexually with limited diversity.

The way thebacteria reproduce is not what we needed. Josh Michener, project lead in ORNL's Biosciences Division, said that they generally reproduce by division, where you go from one mother cell to two daughter cells that have the same genome as the parent.

Protoplast fusion is a genetic research tool first developed in the 1970s. A large population of genetically disparate organisms has been produced by the scientists using this technique, which will result in greater insight into genomic variation and resulting physical characteristics.

Protoplast fusion is a classical genetic engineering method in which cells are stripped of their outer layer and fused together. The underlying chromosomal rearrangements were poorly understood when researchers used the technique for decades, first as a routine genetic technique and then as a tool to engineer traits like antibiotic production in microorganisms.

Scientists didn't know what the genomes of the offspring looked like when they used the technique in the past. We basically benefited from 50 years of developments in the field so that we could do this kind of crossing.

The researchers were able to map the genomes of the offspring back to their parents.

The process looked to be mostly random and they found recombination throughout the genome across a variety of length scales. Those are the characteristics that we wanted to enable genetic mapping.

The team has done a total of four rounds of recombination, resulting in 500 fully-sequencing and highly shuffled offspring. A computational systems biology team led by ORNL's Dan Jacobson is using machine learning methods to speed phenotyping and mapping across panels ofbacteria to identify links between desired physical traits and their genetic underpinning.

A new trait mapping capability could speed up the design of microbes that are better at breaking down plant biomass for the production of clean fuels.

There is an awful lot of useful information in the old literature, according to Michener.

The Center for Bioenergy Innovation at ORNL is known for its strengths in genetic mapping. Other members of the research team were Delyana Vasileva, Christa Brelsford, Hari Chhetri, Chris Ellis, and Dan Close.

More information: Delyana P Vasileva et al, Protoplast fusion in Bacillus species produces frequent, unbiased, genome-wide homologous recombination, Nucleic Acids Research (2022). DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkac025 Journal information: Nucleic Acids Research Citation: Retro technique advances modern bacterial engineering for bioenergy (2022, April 6) retrieved 6 April 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-04-retro-technique-advances-modern-bacterial.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.