Abstract
Feather waste is the highest protein-containing resource in nature and is poorly reused. Bioconversion is widely accepted as a low-cost and environmentally benign process, but limited by the availability of safe and highly efficient feather degrading bacteria (FDB) for its industrial-scale fermentation. Excessive focuses on keratinase and limited knowledge of other factors have hindered complete understanding of the mechanisms employed by FDB to utilize feathers and feather cycling in the biosphere. Streptomyces sp. SCUT-3 can efficiently degrade feather to products with high amino acid content, useful as a nutrition source for animals, plants and microorganisms. Using multiple omics and other techniques, we reveal how SCUT-3 turns on its feather utilization machinery, including its colonization, reducing agent and protease secretion, peptide/amino acid importation and metabolism, oxygen consumption and iron uptake, spore formation and resuscitation, and so on. This study would shed light on the feather utilization mechanisms of FDBs.
Highlights
Feather waste is the highest protein-containing resource in nature and is poorly reused
While keratinases do have a vital role in feather degradation, the abundant disulfide bonds in feather keratin lead to a tightly packed structure, inaccessible to these enzymes and disulfide bond reduction mechanisms used by feather degrading bacteria (FDB) are poorly understood
Sulfide production is indispensable for dermatophyte nail infection[7] and a free cysteinyl group is essential for feather degradation by Escherichia coli expressing recombinant keratinase[8], indicating that similar reducing agents may be produced by FDB
Summary
Feather waste is the highest protein-containing resource in nature and is poorly reused. Traditional hydrothermal and chemical treatments currently used in the feather meal industry are energy exhausted and the produced feather meal has low solubility and is difficult to be digested by animals These high temperature and pressure treatments release large amounts of sulfur and ammonia waste gases, making them unsustainable and polluting. Most FDB need ≥ 5–6 days to completely degrade 1% feather-containing medium and this low efficiency limits their industrial application. FDB are opportunistic species and do not need feathers to survive in soil Their adjustment to feather utilization mode when they encounter feather in the soil is a systematic process involving colonization, secretion of reducing agents and keratinases, matter transportation, and alterations in metabolism/replication/transcription/translation processes. We sequenced the genome and compared the transcriptomes of SCUT-3 bacteria cultured on LB and feather to identify factors involved in feather degradation and reveal the mechanisms underlying its feather utilization
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