Cell: Genetically modified E. coli can also be grown with carbon dioxide

Photo from Cell, 2019, doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.11.009Ecoli is usually an alien organism, or organic compounds that ingest glucose as a food, but the new study suggests that they can be converted into autotroph, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converting it into biomass"I find it amazing that an organism that has evolved over billions of years to evolve into a self-contained organism can be transformed so quickly and completely," said Dave Savage, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the new study,This indicates that metabolism is highly malleableRon Milo, a systems biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science and author of thepaper, said the process of using inorganic carbon to create biomass is called carbon fixation and can be used to address some of the biggest challenges facing humanity todayFor example, increasing carbon fixation in plants can produce more biomass, which may increase the world's food supplyMilo said his team set out to make Ecoli --- "a very genetically malleable model organism" --- fix carbon as a step toward a sustainable industrial process to make biofuelsEcoli often does not use the molecular mechanism sequestration of carbon dioxide, so the researchers imported carbon-sequestration genes based on a genetic sequence that can fix carbonThese changes were not enough to force Ecoli to become self-contained bacteria, so they also defied the three genes in the bacteria involved in metabolizing and put them into growth chambers with limited sugar content, which would cause them to starveIn this environment, Ecoli, which uses carbon dioxide rather than a limited supply of sugar, has advantagesThe researchers wanted to know whether Ecoli could have evolved to use only carbon dioxidethese genetically modified Ecoli siadons are grown on the basis of sodium forchloratoSodium forcutal acid is a carbon molecule that provides the necessary electrons during the energy generation process, but does not contribute to biomassThe air in the growth chamber is also rich in carbon dioxideabout 200 days later, these genetically modified Ecolis ethnomake relies entirely on carbon dioxide in the air to produce biomass, while making foredate a necessary component of a chemical reactionWhen the researchers analyzed the Ecoli genome, they found that the bacteria evolved from at least 11 mutations to self-contained bacteria that consumed only carbon dioxideSome of these mutations occur in genes associated with carbon fixation, while others occur in genes that are known to mutate in other laboratory evolutionary experiments or that use carbon dioxide to produce biomass that has no known roleTobias Erb, a synthetic biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Germany,, published a review of the new study"It's a proof-of-concept in this area, and you can really reshape the metabolic characteristics of living organisms from scratch," he saidThis is an exciting step forwardBut, he said, "if they build out the strains that will have biotechnology significance in the futureI think this is debatable , for example, self-contained E coli currently produces more carbon dioxide than they absorb This can be solved by using carbon dioxide to produce formic acid in the future, which will not result in net carbon dioxide emissions in addition, the researchers used high levels of carbon dioxide in e coli growth chambers--- accounting for about 10 percent of the growth chamber air, but only 0.04 percent of the Earth's atmosphere "We'd like to know if we can reduce it to carbon dioxide levels in the ambient atmosphere, which means that people can use an ambient atmosphere that is much lower (400 ppm), " Milo said "Today, this is an interesting concept," said Patrik Jones, who conducted a study on microbial metabolism engineering at Imperial College Of England This is definitely a step in that direction However, I think it is important to recognize that more research is needed to make use of it " References: 1 Shmuel Gleizer et al Conversion of Escherichia coli to Generate All Biomass Carbon from CO2 Cell, 2019, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2019.11.009 2.Tobias J Erb et al Escherichia coli in Auto (trophic) Mode Cell, 2019, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2019.11.040 3.Lab-Evolved E coli Consume Consume Carbon Dioxidehttps:// https://