Expanding synthetic biology tools by deeper understanding of Aspergillus niger primary metabolism
EMSL Project ID
60833
Abstract
Fungal primary carbon metabolism consists of many connected pathways to convert monosaccharides and other monomeric carbon sources. While many of the pathways have been described as single enzyme per step conversions, recent studies revealed multiplicity of enzymes per metabolic step, creating a novel level of complexity to this process. Also, additional paralogs of these enzymes were discovered in fungal genomes, but so far with unknown physiological function, and indication for additional non-described pathways have also been obtained.
A deep understanding of metabolism is crucial for efficient and effective metabolic engineering strategies to develop novel or improved fungal cell factories for a range of biotechnological applications. Therefore, in this project I aim to unveil the function of these additional paralogous enzymes and unravel the novel sugar metabolic pathways for which we have found indications in recent studies in Aspergillus niger. This study strongly depends on range of capabilities from EMSL and JGI in a highly integrated approach and will serve as reference to obtain a new level of understanding of primary carbon metabolism in other fungi.
The novel enzymes that are discovered and characterized will not only provide a better understanding of primary carbon metabolism, but also add to the synthetic biology toolkit that is available for metabolic engineering. This could be applied in A. niger itself, but also in other fungal cell factories, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, expanding the potential impact of the result into multiple directions.
Project Details
Project type
FICUS Research
Start Date
2023-10-01
End Date
N/A
Status
Active
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Co-Investigator(s)
Team Members