title: ePathBrick: a synthetic biology platform for engineering metabolic pathways in E. coli.
abstract: Harnessing cell factories for producing biofuel and pharmaceutical molecules has stimulated efforts to develop novel synthetic biology tools customized for modular pathway engineering and optimization. Here we report the development of a set of vectors compatible with BioBrick standards and its application in metabolic engineering. The engineered ePathBrick vectors comprise four compatible restriction enzyme sites allocated on strategic positions so that different regulatory control signals can be reused and manipulation of expression cassette can be streamlined. Specifically, these vectors allow for fine-tuning gene expression by integrating multiple transcriptional activation or repression signals into the operator region. At the same time, ePathBrick vectors support the modular assembly of pathway components and combinatorial generation of pathway diversities with three distinct configurations. We also demonstrated the functionality of a seven-gene pathway (~9 Kb) assembled on one single ePathBrick vector. The ePathBrick vectors presented here provide a versatile platform for rapid design and optimization of metabolic pathways in E. coli.
authors: Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies and Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180, USA.
authors: Peng
authors: P
authors: Xu
authors: Amerin
authors: A
authors: Vansiri
authors: Namita
authors: N
authors: Bhan
authors: Mattheos A G
authors: MA
authors: Koffas
mesh_terms: D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism*; D015870:Gene Expression; D005798:Genes, Bacterial; D005818:Genetic Engineering; D005822:Genetic Vectors; D060847:Metabolic Engineering / Q000379:methods*; D053858:Metabolic Networks and Pathways / Q000235:genetics; D005810:Multigene Family; D058615:Synthetic Biology