Date created: | Last Updated:

Category: Project

Description: The yield and ease of purification of biotechnological products are typically greatly enhanced if they can be secreted into the external medium. Although not universally appreciated, however, small molecule biotechnological products do not ‘float across’ the phospholipid bilayer portion of biological membranes, and thus they need transporters to assist their passage into the extramembrane and extracellular spaces. Some of these transporters may be reversible, equilibrative transporters that might more normally be used for uptake, while others may have an efflux directionality imposed on them via suitable energy coupling mechanisms. Despite the energetic costs of small molecule synthesis, natural evolution does in fact provide a number of mechanisms by which the secretion of such products can actually enhance fitness. Where available these provide useful starting points, and assaying for such activities is crucial. In particular, in a systems biology approach, we first need to identify such/suitable activities before we can seek to increase them. They may then be improved through promoter engineering, via manipulation of control elements, or by directed evolution of the transporter proteins themselves. Modern methods of synthetic biology provide enormous opportunities for all kinds of efflux transporter engineering; they are just beginning to be realised.