Atmospheric and room temperature plasma (ARTP) as a new powerful mutagenesis tool

Abstract

Developing rapid and diverse microbial mutation tool is of importance to strain modification. In this review, a new mutagenesis method for microbial mutation breeding using the radio-frequency atmospheric-pressure glow discharge (RF APGD) plasma jets is summarized. Based on the experimental study, the helium RF APGD plasma jet has been found to be able to change the DNA sequences significantly, indicating that the RF APGD plasma jet would be a powerful tool for the microbial mutagenesis with its outstanding features, such as the low and controllable gas temperatures, abundant chemically reactive species, rapid mutation, high operation flexibility, etc. Then, with the RF APGD plasma generator as the core component, a mutation machine named as atmospheric and room temperature plasma (ARTP) mutation system has been developed and successfully employed for the mutation breeding of more than 40 kinds of microorganisms including bacteria, fungi, and microalgae. Finally, the prospect of the ARTP mutagenesis is discussed.

Changes in the physiological properties and kinetics of citric acid accumulation via carbon ion irradiation mutagenesis of Aspergillus niger

“…These results proved that the physiological properties of fungal spores were related to their physiological metabolic functions. Changing in the physiological characteristics of microbes via mutagenesis indicated differential secondary metabolite accumulation (Zhang et al, 2014).…”

“…Also, some new and powerful mutagenesis methods have been applied to the breeding of high-yielding industrial strains. These new methods have technological advantages (higher mutation rates and more abundant phenotypic mutations) (Hu et al, 2013;Zhang et al, 2015), and include atmospheric and room temperature plasma mutagenesis technology in Beijing (Li et al, 2008;Wang et al, 2010;Lu et al, 2011;Zhang et al, 2014) (Yang et al, 2013), as a type of high linear energy transfer (LET) irradiation, have a higher relative biological effect (RBE) compared with X-and γ-rays (Yang et al, 2007;Li S.W. et al, 2011;Ota et al, 2013;Zhou et al, 2013), and are expected to increase mutation frequency and have a wide mutation spectrum.…”

Secondary Metabolism Variation of a Marine Fungus Following Treatment with Dielectric Barrier Discharge Plasma and Chemical Mutagens

“…Physical and chemical mutagenization can also introduce site mutations or large-scale changes into coding genes, gene clusters, or their regulative areas, leading to the activation of silent genes and new secondary metabolites [3,4]. Plasma treatment, as an efficient and convenient mutagenesis method, has been widely used in industrial microbial breeding [5]. However, as for its application in microbial natural product research, especially for improving fungal chemical diversity, related reports are scarce at present.…”

Mutation breeding of high 4-androstene-3,17-dione-producing Mycobacterium neoaurum ZADF-4 by atmospheric and room temperature plasma treatment

“…It has been reported that ARTP has a higher positive genotoxic response than traditional mutation methods, making it a potentially effective mutation breeding strategy (Hua et al, 2010;Wang et al, 2010;Li et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2014). In this study, ARTP-irradiation was used for inducing random mutations, and high AD-producing M. neoaurum mutants were selected later.…”

“…In this study, the operating parameters were as follows: the radio frequency (RF) power input was 40 W, the gas flow was 12.5 L/min, the distance between the plasma torch nozzle exit and the sample plate (D) was 1 cm, the temperature of the plasma jet was below 40 °C, and the plasma treatment time ranged from 60 to 180 s Li et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2014).…”