Biological production of chemicals often requires the use of cellular cofactors, such as nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADP + ). These cofactors are expensive to use in vitro and difficult to control in vivo. We demonstrate the development of a noncanonical redox cofactor system based on nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN + ). The key enzyme in the system is a computationally designed glucose dehydrogenase with a 10 7 -fold cofactor specificity switch toward NMN + over NADP + based on apparent enzymatic activity. We demonstrate that this system can be used to support diverse redox chemistries in vitro with high total turnover number (~39,000), to channel reducing power in Escherichia coli whole cells specifically from glucose to a pharmaceutical intermediate, levodione, and to sustain the high metabolic flux required for the Reprints and permissions information is available at www.nature.com/reprints.

Background: Noncanonical redox cofactors are emerging as important tools in cell-free biosynthesis to increase the economic viability, to enable exquisite control, and to expand the range of chemistries accessible. However, these noncanonical redox cofactors need to be biologically synthesized to achieve full integration with renewable biomanufacturing processes. Results: In this work, we engineered Escherichia coli cells to biosynthesize the noncanonical cofactor nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN +), which has been efficiently used in cell-free biosynthesis. First, we developed a growthbased screening platform to identify effective NMN + biosynthetic pathways in E. coli. Second, we explored various pathway combinations and host gene disruption to achieve an intracellular level of ~ 1.5 mM NMN + , a 130-fold increase over the cell's basal level, in the best strain, which features a previously uncharacterized nicotinamide phosphoribosyltransferase (NadV) from Ralstonia solanacearum. Last, we revealed mechanisms through which NMN + accumulation impacts E. coli cell fitness, which sheds light on future work aiming to improve the production of this noncanonical redox cofactor. Conclusion: These results further the understanding of effective production and integration of NMN + into E. coli. This may enable the implementation of NMN +-directed biocatalysis without the need for exogenous cofactor supply.

EORTC criteria and PERCIST 1.0 are more sensitive and accurate than RECIST 1.1 for the detection of an early therapeutic response to chemotherapy in patients with NSCLC. Although EORTC criteria and PERCIST 1.0 showed similar results, PERCIST 1.0 is preferred because detailed and unambiguous definitions are given. We also found that response evaluations with PERCIST 1.0 using a single lesion and multiple lesions gave similar response classifications.

Bacteria undergoing anaerobic fermentation must maintain redox balance. In vivo metabolic evolution schemes based on this principle have been limited to targeting NADH-dependent reactions. Here, we developed a facile, specific, and high-throughput growth-based selection platform for NADPH-consuming reactions in vivo, based on an engineered NADPH-producing glycolytic pathway in Escherichia coli. We used the selection system in the directed evolution of a NADH-dependent d-lactate dehydrogenase from Lactobacillus delbrueckii toward utilization of NADPH. Through one round of selection, we obtained multiple enzyme variants with superior NADPH-dependent activities and protein expression levels; these mutants may serve as important tools in biomanufacturing d-lactate as a renewable polymer building block. Importantly, sequence analysis and computational protein modeling revealed that diverging evolutionary paths during the selection resulted in two distinct cofactor binding modes, which suggests that the high throughput of our selection system allowed deep searching of protein sequence space to discover diverse candidates en masse.

We report an aerobic, growth-based selection platform founded on NADP(H) redox balance restoration in Escherichia coli, and demonstrate its application in high-throughput evolution of oxygenase. A single round of selection enabled Pseudomonas aeruginoasa 4-hydroxybenzoate hydroxylase (PobA) to accept 3,4-dihydroxybenzoic acid efficiently, an essential step toward gallic acid biosynthesis. The best variant DA015 exhibited more than 5-fold higher catalytic efficiency compared to previously engineered enzymes. Structural modeling suggests precise reorganization of active site hydrogen bond network, which is difficult to obtain without deep navigation of combinatorial sequence space. We envision universal application of this selection platform in engineering NADPH-dependent oxidoreductases.