Abstract
Efficient glucose-xylose co-utilization is critical for economical biofuel production from lignocellulosic biomass. To enable glucose-xylose co-utilization, a highly active xylose specific transporter without glucose inhibition is desirable. However, our understanding of the structure-activity/specificity relationship of sugar transporters in general is limited, which hinders our ability to engineer xylose-specific transporters. In this study, via homology modeling and analysis of hexose sugar transporter HXT14 mutants, we identified a highly conserved YYX(T/P) motif that plays an important role in controlling the activity and specificity of sugar transporters. We demonstrated that mutating the two tyrosine residues of the motif to phenylalanine, respectively, improved glucose transport capacity across several different sugar transporters. Furthermore, we illustrated that by engineering the fourth position in the YYX(T/P) motif, the sugar specificity of transporters was significantly altered or even reversed towards xylose. Finally, using the engineered sugar transporter, genuine glucose-xylose co-fermentation was achieved. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2016;113: 1460-1467. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.