Rational design of glycerol dehydratase： Swapping the genes encoding the subunits of glycerol dehydratase to improve enzymatic properties

1,3-propanediol (1,3-PD) is an important material for chemical industry,and there has been always much interest in the production of 1,3-PD using all possible routes. The genes encoding glyc-erol dehydratase (GDHt) from Citrobacter freundii,Klebsiella pneumoniae and metagenome were cloned and expressed in E. coli. All glycerol dehy-dratases but the one from metagenome could be detected to show enzyme activities. In order to im-prove the enzymatic properties of GDHts,the genes encoding α and β-γ subunits were cloned,and the enzyme characteristics were evolved by rational de-sign based on their 3D structures which were con-structed by homology modeling. Six heteroenzymes were obtained by swapping the α subunit genes of these three different-source-derived GDHts. The pH,thermal stability and Vmax of some heteroenzymes were dramatically improved by 2―5 times compared with the wild one (GDHtKP). The GDHt cloned from metagenome,originally proved to be with no enzyme activity,was converted into active enzyme by swap-ping its subunits with other different GDHts. In addi-tion,the effect of subtle 3D structural changes on the properties of the enzyme was also observed.     

珊瑚礁相关病毒的研究进展

珊瑚礁被称为海洋中的“热带雨林”,是海洋生态系统中的核心组成部分之一。珊瑚礁病毒包含珊瑚本身感染的病毒和珊瑚共生生物（如藻类、细菌等）感染的病毒,对于珊瑚礁健康与疾病、生长与死亡起着独特而重要的作用,在维持珊瑚礁生态系统的物质循环和能量流动等生态学功能方面起着潜在作用。由于技术的局限以及关注度较低等原因,有关珊瑚礁病毒的研究较少。近年来,随着高通量测序技术的发展,宏转录组和宏基因组逐渐成为研究珊瑚礁病毒多样性及其生态学功能的重要方法之一。本文对国内外相关研究进行总结和归纳,拟为珊瑚礁病毒后续研究提供新的方向和思路,同时指导我国珊瑚礁的保护以及修复。     

基于宏基因组数据的微生物群落比较方法

宏基因组学是一门研究直接来自环境的基因材料的新兴学科。传统的微生物学研究,依赖于实验室培养,而宏基因组学,使得对这些未被培养或不可培养的微生物的研究成为可能,也为同一环境中微生物之间相互作用的研究,以及微生物群落的整体研究,指明了新的方向。随着测序技术的迅速发展,大量宏基因组测序数据不断产生,对新的统计分析方法提出了更高的要求。简要介绍了宏基因组学以及其中的几个重要问题,主要针对其中基于测序数据的群落比较问题进行论述,介绍了多种现今常用的统计计算方法,并分析了它们的适用情况。     

宏基因组技术在环境微生物资源开发中应用的探索

环境中约有99%的微生物在现有的条件下不能被培养,这使微生物资源的开发利用受到了限制.宏基因组是指某一特定的环境中全部微生物的总DNA,宏基因组技术是将样品中的总DNA提取出来后,利用适宜的载体克隆到宿主细胞中以构建成宏基因组文库,再筛选新的活性物质或基因,该技术在微生物资源的开发利用上将会有巨大的发展潜力.