Metabolic Modeling Provides a Roadmap to Optimize Bioproduct Yield from Deconstructed Lignin Aromatics by Novosphingobium aromaticivorans

Citation

A. M. Linz et al. "iNovo479: Metabolic Modeling Provides a Roadmap to Optimize Bioproduct Yield from Deconstructed Lignin Aromatics by Novosphingobium aromaticivorans" Metabolites 12 (2022) [DOI: 10.3390/metabo12040366]

Description

Lignin is an abundant renewable source of aromatics and precursors for the production of other organic chemicals. However, lignin is a heterogeneous polymer, so the mixture of aromatics released during its depolymerization can make its conversion to chemicals challenging. Microbes are a potential solution to this challenge, as some can catabolize multiple aromatic substrates into one product. Novosphingobium aromaticivorans has this ability, and its use as a bacterial chassis for lignin valorization could be improved by the ability to predict product yields based on thermodynamic and metabolic inputs. In this work, we built a genome-scale metabolic model of N. aromaticivorans, iNovo479, to guide the engineering of strains for aromatic conversion into products. iNovo479 predicted product yields from single or multiple aromatics, and the impact of combinations of aromatic and non-aromatic substrates on product yields. We show that enzyme reactions from other organisms can be added to iNovo479 to predict the feasibility and profitability of producing additional products by engineered strains. Thus, we conclude that iNovo479 can help guide the design of bacteria to convert lignin aromatics into valuable chemicals.

Data Access

All data, code, and model builds used in this paper are available on GitHub. Input KEGG reaction data for these models are available in the Integrated Microbial Genomes database with taxon ID 640427126.

Conversion
Metabolomics
Modeling