BACKGROUND The toxicity of alcohols is one of the major roadblocks of biological fermentation for biofuels production. Methylobacterium extorquens AM1, a facultative methylotrophic α-proteobacterium, has been engineered to generate 1-butanol from cheap carbon feedstocks through a synthetic metabolic pathway. However, M. extorquens AM1 is vulnerable to solvent stress, which impedes further devel...

Aerobic gram-negative methylotrophs oxidize methanol to formaldehyde by using a methanol dehydrogenase that has pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ) as a prosthetic group. Seventy-two mutants which are unable to grow on methanol unless the growth medium is supplemented with PQQ have been isolated in the facultative methanol utilizer Methylobacterium extorquens AM1. In addition, 12 previously isolated...

Soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) is an enzyme involved in drug metabolism that catalyzes the hydrolysis of epoxides to form their corresponding diols. sEH has a broad substrate range and shows high regio- and enantioselectivity for nucleophilic ring opening by Asp333. Epoxide hydrolases therefore have potential synthetic applications. We have used combined quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (...

This letter presents a method for the parametrization of semiempirical models for proton transfer reactions in water clusters. Two new models are developed: AM1-W, which is a reparameterization of the classic AM1 model, and AM1PG-W, which is a modified AM1-like model including a pairwise correction to the core repulsion function. Both models show good performance on hydrogen-bonding energies an...

The vasodilator and vascular regulatory peptide adrenomedullin (AM), a member of the calcitonin gene-related peptide family of peptides, is predicted to play a pivotal protective role in cardiovascular dysfunction. The principle AM (AM1) receptor is composed of a G protein-linked calcitonin receptor-like receptor and a receptor activity-modifying protein (receptor activity-modifying protein 2)....

BACKGROUND Butanol is a promising next generation fuel and a bulk chemical precursor. Although clostridia are the primary industrial microbes for the fermentative production of 1-butanol, alternative engineered hosts have the potential to generate 1-butanol from alternative carbon feedstocks via synthetic metabolic pathways. Methylobacterium extorquens AM1, a facultative methylotrophic α-proteo...

The nucleotide sequence for the N-terminal region of the small subunit of methylamine dehydrogenase from Methylobacterium extorquens AM1 has revealed a leader sequence that is unusual in both its length and composition. Gene fusions to lacZ and phoA show that this leader sequence does not function in Escherichia coli but does function in M. extorquens AM1.

The nucleotide and deduced amino acid sequence of a novel small (beta) subunit of methanol dehydrogenase of Methylobacterium extorquens AM1 (previously Pseudomonas AM1) has been determined. Work with the whole protein has shown that is has an alpha 2 beta 2 configuration.

Methylobacterium extorquens AM1 was used to explore the genetics of dephosphotetrahydromethanopterin (dH(4)MPT) biosynthesis. Strains with mutations in eight "archaeal-type" genes linked on the chromosome of M. extorquens AM1 were analyzed for the ability to synthesize dH(4)MPT, and six were found to be dH(4)MPT negative. Putative functions of these genes in dH(4)MPT biosynthesis are discussed.