Artificial Caprolactam-Specific Riboswitch as an Intracellular Metabolite Sensor

Sungyeon Jang, Sungho Jang, Dae Kyun Im, Taek Jin Kang, Min Kyu Oh, Gyoo Yeol Jung

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

30 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Caprolactam is a monomer used for the synthesis of nylon-6, and a recombinant microbial strain for biobased production of nylon-6 was recently developed. An intracellular biosensor for caprolactam can facilitate high-throughput metabolic engineering of recombinant microbial strains. Because of the mixed production of caprolactam and valerolactam in the recombinant strain, a caprolactam biosensor should be highly specific for caprolactam. However, a highly specific caprolactam sensor has not been reported. Here, we developed an artificial riboswitch that specifically responds to caprolactam. This riboswitch was prepared using a coupled in vitro-in vivo selection strategy with a heterogeneous pool of RNA aptamers obtained from in vitro selection to construct a riboswitch library used in in vivo selection. The caprolactam riboswitch successfully discriminated caprolactam from valerolactam. Moreover, the riboswitch was activated by 3.36-fold in the presence of 50 mM caprolactam. This riboswitch enabled caprolactam-dependent control of cell growth, which will be useful for improving caprolactam production and is a valuable tool for metabolic engineering.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1276-1283
Number of pages8
JournalACS Synthetic Biology
Volume8
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019 Jun 21

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 American Chemical Society.

Keywords

  • SELEX
  • caprolactam
  • high-throughput screening
  • metabolite biosensor
  • riboswitch

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (miscellaneous)

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