title: Properties of alternative microbial hosts used in synthetic biology: towards the design of a modular chassis.
abstract: The chassis is the cellular host used as a recipient of engineered biological systems in synthetic biology. They are required to propagate the genetic information and to express the genes encoded in it. Despite being an essential element for the appropriate function of genetic circuits, the chassis is rarely considered in their design phase. Consequently, the circuits are transferred to model organisms commonly used in the laboratory, such as Escherichia coli, that may be suboptimal for a required function. In this review, we discuss some of the properties desirable in a versatile chassis and summarize some examples of alternative hosts for synthetic biology amenable for engineering. These properties include a suitable life style, a robust cell wall, good knowledge of its regulatory network as well as of the interplay of the host components with the exogenous circuits, and the possibility of developing whole-cell models and tuneable metabolic fluxes that could allow a better distribution of cellular resources (metabolites, ATP, nucleotides, amino acids, transcriptional and translational machinery). We highlight Pseudomonas putida, widely used in many different biotechnological applications as a prominent organism for synthetic biology due to its metabolic diversity, robustness and ease of manipulation.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, U.K.
authors.forename: Juhyun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, U.K.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Salvador
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, U.K.
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Saunders
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, U.K.
authors.forename: Jaime
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: González
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, U.K.
authors.forename: Claudio
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Avignone-Rossa
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, U.K. j.jimenez@surrey.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Jose Ignacio
authors.initials: JI
authors.lastname: Jiménez
mesh_terms: D005818:Genetic Engineering; D053858:Metabolic Networks and Pathways; D016958:Pseudomonas putida / Q000502:physiology*; D058615:Synthetic Biology
keywords: Pseudomonas; metabolic engineering; microbiology; modularity; whole-cell models