UNLABELLED 5-Aminolevulinic acid (ALA), a nonprotein amino acid involved in tetrapyrrole synthesis, has been widely applied in agriculture, medicine, and food production. Many engineered metabolic pathways have been constructed; however, the production yields are still low. In this study, several 5-aminolevulinic acid synthases (ALASs) from different sources were evaluated and compared with res...

Corynebacterium-Mycobacterium-Nocardia (CMN) group are the causative agents of a broad spectrum of diseases in humans. A distinctive feature of these Gram-positive bacteria is the presence of an outer membrane of unique structure and composition. Recently, resistance-nodulation-division (RND) transporters (nicknamed MmpLs, Mycobacterial membrane protein Large) have emerged as major contributors...

Vanillin dehydrogenase (VDH) is a crucial enzyme involved in the degradation of lignin-derived aromatic compounds. Herein, the VDH from Corynebacterium glutamicum was characterized. The relative molecular mass (Mr) determined by SDS-PAGE was ~51 kDa, whereas the apparent native Mr values revealed by gel filtration chromatography were 49.5, 92.3, 159.0 and 199.2 kDa, indicating the presence of d...

Transporters of the dicarboxylate amino acid-cation symporter family often mediate uptake of C(4)-dicarboxylates, such as succinate or l-malate, in bacteria. A member of this family, dicarboxylate transporter A (DctA) from Corynebacterium glutamicum, was characterized to catalyze uptake of the C(4)-dicarboxylates succinate, fumarate, and l-malate, which was inhibited by oxaloacetate, 2-oxogluta...

Cadaverine, the expected raw material of polyamides, is produced by decarboxylation of L-lysine. If we could produce cadaverine from the cheapest sugar, and as a renewable resource, it would be an effective solution against global warming, but there has been no attempt to produce cadaverine from glucose by fermentation. We focused on Corynebacterium glutamicum, whose L-lysine fermentation abili...

Ohr, a bacterial protein encoded by the Organic Hydroperoxide Resistance (ohr) gene, plays a critical role in resistance to organic hydroperoxides. In the present study, we show that the Cys-based thiol-dependent Ohr of Corynebacterium glutamicum decomposes organic hydroperoxides more efficiently than hydrogen peroxide. Replacement of either of the two Cys residues of Ohr by a Ser residue resul...

Transcription initiation is the key step in gene expression in bacteria, and it is therefore studied for both theoretical and practical reasons. Promoters, the traffic lights of transcription initiation, are used as construction elements in biotechnological efforts to coordinate 'green waves' in the metabolic pathways leading to the desired metabolites. Detailed analyses of Corynebacterium glut...

For a long time, Corynebacteria have been the organisms of choice for industrial bioproduction of amino acids. Later on, Corynebacteria have also been used for making biofuels and a suite of addedvalue chemicals. In this issue of Biotechnology Journal, Unthan et al. [1] provide a splendid example of how systems and synthetic biology approaches are instrumental for significantly contributing to ...