Information obtained through detail analysis of microbial metabolism leads to finding of unexpected new reactions and enzymes useful for bioprocess design. Recent accumulation of omics data facilitated to identify the novel enzyme genes and to expand the enzyme library. Here, examples of multistep enzyme catalyzed process development to chemical synthesis and environmental control by applying unique reactions found in the microbial metabolism of amino acids, fatty acids, nucleosides, and inorganic nitrogen metabolism are described.
1) Amino acid metabolism: The expanded library of amino acid-hydroxylating dioxygenase made possible the production of various chiral hydroxy amino acids and chiral amino acid sulfoxides by the cascade reactions coupled with the dioxygenases and the enzymes generating the related derivatives.
2) Fatty acid metabolism: Novel polyunsaturated fatty acids saturation metabolism was found in gut microorganisms such as lactic acid bacteria. The metabolism involved four enzymes of hydratase, dehydrogenase, isomerase, and reductase. The combination of these enzymes enabled to produce various hydroxy, oxo, and enone fatty acids with unique physiological activity useful for health.
3) Nucleoside metabolisms: The reversible reactions involved in nucleoside degradation metabolism were applied to produce deoxyribonucleosides coupled with energy generation system.
4) Nitrifying bacteria play an important role in generating nitrate for crop cultivations. A controllable model consortium for ammonification and nitrification using a co-culture of only three strains selected through metagenomic analysis was established. Denitrification with a bio-degradative polymer as an electron doner was developed by coupling of biopolymer degrader and denitrifying bacteria and applied together with nitrifying consortia to recirculating aquaculture system.
Jun Ogawa is a professor of the Laboratory of Fermentation Physiology and Applied Microbiology in Division of Applied Life Sciences, Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University. He studied applied microbiology and completed his doctorate in 1995 at Kyoto University and became an assistant professor at the same university. He was a visiting researcher at French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) (2006-2007) and has appointed as a full professor of the current position in 2009. He has published over 270 papers in applied microbiology such as bioprocess development, microbial metabolism analysis, and microbial enzyme engineering, microbial community analysis and functional development such as gut microbiota and rhizosphere microorganisms, etc. He was awarded "Oleoscience Award" by the Japan Oil Chemists' Society (2015 and 2020), "Society Award of Japanese Association for Food Immunology" (2018), "Ching Hou Biotechnology Award" (2020) and "Fellow" (2021) by American Oil Chemists’ Society, and "Chevreul Medal" by the French association for the study of lipids (2021).
