Print Email Facebook Twitter Degeneration of penicillin production in ethanol-limited chemostat cultivations of Penicillium chrysogenum: A systems biology approach Title Degeneration of penicillin production in ethanol-limited chemostat cultivations of Penicillium chrysogenum: A systems biology approach Author Douma, R.D. Batista, J.M. Touw, K.M. Kiel, J.A.K.W. Krikken, A.M. Zhao, Z. Veiga, T. Klaassen, P. Bovenberg, R.A.L. Daran, J.M. Heijnen, J.J. Van Gulik, W.M. Faculty Applied Sciences Department BT/Biotechnology Date 2011-08-19 Abstract Background In microbial production of non-catabolic products such as antibiotics a loss of production capacity upon long-term cultivation (for example chemostat), a phenomenon called strain degeneration, is often observed. In this study a systems biology approach, monitoring changes from gene to produced flux, was used to study degeneration of penicillin production in a high producing Penicillium chrysogenum strain during prolonged ethanol-limited chemostat cultivations. Results During these cultivations, the biomass specific penicillin production rate decreased more than 10-fold in less than 22 generations. No evidence was obtained for a decrease of the copy number of the penicillin gene cluster, nor a significant down regulation of the expression of the penicillin biosynthesis genes. However, a strong down regulation of the biosynthesis pathway of cysteine, one of the precursors of penicillin, was observed. Furthermore the protein levels of the penicillin pathway enzymes L-?-(?-aminoadipyl)-L-?-cystenyl-D-?-valine synthetase (ACVS) and isopenicillin-N synthase (IPNS), decreased significantly. Re-cultivation of fully degenerated cells in unlimited batch culture and subsequent C-limited chemostats did only result in a slight recovery of penicillin production. Conclusions Our findings indicate that the observed degeneration is attributed to a significant decrease of the levels of the first two enzymes of the penicillin biosynthesis pathway, ACVS and IPNS. This decrease is not caused by genetic instability of the penicillin amplicon, neither by down regulation of the penicillin biosynthesis pathway. Furthermore no indications were obtained for degradation of these enzymes as a result of autophagy. Possible causes for the decreased enzyme levels could be a decrease of the translation efficiency of ACVS and IPNS during degeneration, or the presence of a culture variant impaired in the biosynthesis of functional proteins of these enzymes, which outcompeted the high producing part of the population. To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:e11c64ed-8523-4b02-8261-f1e2537aea2d DOI https://doi.org/10.1186/1752-0509-5-132 Publisher BioMed Central ISSN 1752-0509 Source http://www.biomedcentral.com/1752-0509/5/132 Source BMC Systems Biology, 5, 2011 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights © 2011 The Author(s)Licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Files PDF Douma_2011.pdf 1.94 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:e11c64ed-8523-4b02-8261-f1e2537aea2d/datastream/OBJ/view