Azotobacter vinelandii is a widely studied model diazotrophic (nitrogen-fixing) bacterium and also an obligate aerobe, differentiating it from many other diazotrophs that require environments low in oxygen for the function of the nitrogenase. As a freeliving bacterium, A. vinelandii has evolved enzymes and transporters to minimize the loss of fixed nitrogen to the surrounding environment. In this study, we pursued efforts to target specific enzymes and further developed screens to identify individual colonies of A. vinelandii producing elevated levels of extracellular nitrogen. Targeted deletions were done to convert urea into a terminal product by disrupting the urease genes that influence the ability of A. vinelandii to recycle the urea nitrogen within the cell. Construction of a nitrogen biosensor strain was done to rapidly screen several thousand colonies disrupted by transposon insertional mutagenesis to identify strains with increased extracellular nitrogen production. Several disruptions were identified in the ammonium transporter gene amtB that resulted in the production of sufficient levels of extracellular nitrogen to support the growth of the biosensor strain. Further studies substituting the biosensor strain with the green alga Chlorella sorokiniana confirmed that levels of nitrogen produced were sufficient to support the growth of this organism when the medium was supplemented with sufficient sucrose to support the growth of the A. vinelandii in coculture. The nature and quantities of nitrogen released by urease and amtB disruptions were further compared to strains reported in previous efforts that altered the nifLA regulatory system to produce elevated levels of ammonium. These results reveal alternative approaches that can be used in various combinations to yield new strains that might have further application in biofertilizer schemes. N utrient requirements are directly linked to biomass production, and any potential increased improvement in the scale of biomass yield will necessitate a proportional increase in the demand for essential nutrients. For all photosynthetic organisms (photoautotrophs such as land plants, algae, and cyanobacteria) with requisite light energy and water, nitrogen is the most limiting and expensive nutrient input for aquaculture and agricultural production alike (1). A majority of our current nitrogen fertilizer production is tied to the burning of fossil fuels to generate ammonia from molecular nitrogen (N 2 gas) through the Haber-Bosch process, which accounts for 3 to 5% of world natural gas consumption, or about 1 to 2% of total worldwide energy expenditures (1-3). In developed countries, industrial nitrogen production is accompanied by a huge economic and energetic cost overall (2), while this key nutrient limits agricultural productivity in developing countries, where energy and infrastructure costs prohibit the utilization of the Haber-Bosch process to produce ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen on a large scale.The development of biological approaches to improve biof...

The terminal enzyme in the bacterial wax ester biosynthetic pathway is the bifunctional wax ester synthase/acyl-coenzyme A:diacylglycerol acyltransferase (WS/DGAT), which utilizes a fatty alcohol and a fatty acyl-coenzyme A (CoA) to synthesize the corresponding wax ester. In this report, we identify a specific residue in WS/DGAT enzymes obtained from Marinobacter aquaeolei VT8 and Acinetobacter baylyi that alters fatty alcohol selectivity and kinetic parameters when modified to alternative residues.

The bifunctional wax ester synthase/acyl-coenzyme A:diacylglycerol acyltransferase (WS/DGAT or wax ester synthase) catalyzes the terminal reaction in the bacterial wax ester biosynthetic pathway, utilizing a range of alcohols and fatty acyl-CoAs to synthesize the corresponding wax ester. The wild-type wax ester synthase Maqu_0168 from Marinobacter aquaeolei VT8 exhibits a preference for longer fatty alcohols, while applications with smaller alcohols would yield products with desired biotechnological properties. Small and medium chain length alcohol substrates are much poorer substrates for the native enzyme, which may hinder broad application of the wax ester synthase in many proposed biosynthetic schemes. Developing approaches to improve enzyme activity toward specific smaller alcohol substrates first requires a clear understanding of which amino acids of the primary sequences of these enzymes contribute to substrate specificity in the native enzyme. In this report, we surveyed a range of potential residues and identified the leucine at position 356 and methionine at position 405 in Maqu_0168 as residues that affected selectivity toward small, branched, and aromatic alcohols when substituted with different amino acids. This analysis provides evidence of residues that line the binding site for wax ester synthase, which will aid rational approaches to improve this enzyme with specific substrates.