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Progress made in the efficient biological conversion of methanol Author/Source: Sinochem New Network Date: 2020-06-01 Clicks: 12 Recently, researchers at the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have made progress in enhancing the efficiency of biological methanol conversion through tolerance engineering. Artificial methylotrophs hold certain potential for methanol biotransformation. Existing modification strategies mainly focus on enzyme engineering and pathway engineering approaches such as identifying and modifying key enzymes, increasing the supply of formaldehyde receptors, and coupling methanol metabolism with cell growth; there have been no studies on improving the efficiency of methanol biotransformation through tolerance engineering. The research team then employed strategies of tolerance engineering and adaptive evolution to obtain methanol-dependent Corynebacterium glutamicum with enhanced methanol tolerance, and found that the mutant strain exhibited a faster growth rate and methanol utilization rate at high methanol concentrations; when the ratio of methanol to xylose used together exceeded 7:1, methanol became the primary carbon source for cell growth. Through genomic and transcriptomic analyses, combined with reverse metabolic engineering, they elucidated the mechanisms underlying increased methanol tolerance and conversion efficiency. This study lays the foundation for further improving the methanol utilization efficiency of engineered methylotrophs. Methanol is an inexpensive and readily available organic monocarbon precursor with a higher energy density than common sugar-based precursors; it can provide more reducing power for biosynthesis, thereby increasing the conversion efficiency in biomanufacturing, and is considered one of the ideal substrates for biomanufacturing. Modifying platform strains with a clear genetic background and wide industrial application to create artificial methylotrophs for efficient methanol biotransformation is one of the current research hotspots. However, the current artificial methylotrophic bacteria have low methanol utilization efficiency and poor methanol tolerance, which limits the development and application of methanol biotransformation.