{"482821":{"#nid":"482821","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Double Play for Peralta-Yahya","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003EPamela Peralta-Yahya\u2019s lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology develops technologies to better engineer biological systems for chemical synthesis, and the group is getting front-page treatment on a national scale to showcase its groundbreaking work.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003EThe cover for the December issue of \u003Cem\u003EACS Synthetic Biology\u003C\/em\u003E features an artistic depiction of the group\u2019s latest research in the development of biosensors to screen chemical-producing microbes, which could lead to the faster, more efficient production of chemicals.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003EPeralta-Yahya conceived the research, which is entitled \u201cGPCR-Based Chemical Biosensors for Medium-Chain Fatty Acids,\u201d and designed the experiments with her co-authors, post-doctoral researcher Kuntal Mukherjee and former lab member and graduate student Souryadeep Bhattacharyya.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003EThey set out to address one of the key limitations to engineering microbes for chemical production, which is the reliance on low-throughput chromatography. Many value-added chemicals require sensors for high-throughput screening \u2013 that\u2019s what Peralta-Yahya and her colleagues are going after.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003E\u201cWe engineer microorganisms to make chemicals and one of our areas is making biofuels,\u201d says Peralta-Yahya, who is an assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and a faculty researcher with the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. \u201cRight now, when we engineer a biofuel-producing microorganism \u2013 when we make changes and screen large numbers of cells to determine how the changes affect the microorganism\u2019s biofuel production \u2013 we use chromatography, so we can only test 100 samples a day. It limits what we can do.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003EFor the larger scale genome engineering Peralta-Yahya has in mind, a process that can screen on the order of 10 million samples a day is needed.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003EBut making biosensors for biofuel precursors isn\u2019t easy, she says, \u201cbecause biofuels are hydrocarbons, so they don\u2019t have a lot of functional groups to bind, which is one way of triggering a sensor.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003ESo they used G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs, a class of protein at the root of our five senses) as a sensing unit. GPCRs naturally bind a wide array of chemicals, including medium-chain fatty acids, which are immediate precursors to advanced biofuel fatty acid methyl esters (which comprise biodiesel).\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003E\u201cThis research was the first to show that we can quickly assemble sensors for these difficult molecules, like biofuels,\u201d says Peralta-Yayha, who actually co-authored not one, but two research papers published in December\u2019s \u003Cem\u003EACS Synthetic Biology\u003C\/em\u003E.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003E\u201cTo our knowledge this is the first report of a whole-cell medium-chain fatty acid biosensor,\u201d the researchers write, \u201cwhich we envision could be applied to the evolutionary engineering of fatty acid-producing microbes.\u201d\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003ETo carry out their experiments, the team made use of the Petit Institute\u2019s core facilities, particularly the Cellular Analysis core and its BD LSR II Flow Cytometer. Flow cytometry is a powerful method for isolating cells of interest (and investigating many aspects of cell biology, for that matter). The equipment allowed Peralta-Yahya\u2019s team to run their samples and quickly attain and analyze the data.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003EMeanwhile, the second article, entitled, \u201cPterin-Dependent Mono-oxidation for the Microbial Synthesis of a Modified Monoterpene Indole Alkaloid,\u201d touches on another focus area of the Peralta-Yahya lab: pharmaceutical precursors.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003EMonoterpene Indole Alkaloids (MIAs) have important therapeutic value as anticancer, antimalarial and antiarrhythmic agents. They are derived from plants, but the challenge is, \u201cplants take a long time to grow and they produce very little of the compound you want,\u201d says Peralta-Yahya, who co-authored the article with graduate students Amy Ehrenworth and Stephen Sarria.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003E\u201cIf you can make a microbe that produces that precursor, then we can produce larger quantities and produce it faster,\u201d Peralta-Yayha says. \u201cSo in this research we make a derivatized alkaloid, removing a few steps for the chemist in the process from plant precursor to the final drug.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003EThe researchers conceived the first microbial synthesis of a modified MIA, with its important medicinal compounds.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003E\u201cThis work opens the door to the scalable production of MIAs as well as the production of modified MIAs to serve as late intermediates in the semi-synthesis of known and novel therapeutics,\u201d the authors write. \u201cFurther, the microbial strains in this work can be used as plant pathway discovery tools to elucidate known MIA biosynethetic pathways or to identify pathways leading to novel MIAs.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECONTACT:\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/node\/jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications Officer II\u003Cbr \/\u003EParker H. Petit Institute for\u003Cbr \/\u003EBioengineering and Bioscience\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"Petit Institute researcher published twice in same journal; core facilities play key role in the work"}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp class=\u0022p1\u0022\u003EPetit Institute researcher published twice in same journal; core facilities play key role in the work\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Petit Institute researcher published twice in same journal; core facilities play key role in the work"}],"uid":"28153","created_gmt":"2016-01-06 17:23:28","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:20:20","author":"Jerry Grillo","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2016-01-06T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2016-01-06T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"482781":{"id":"482781","type":"image","title":"Peralta-Yahya and students","body":null,"created":"1452204000","gmt_created":"2016-01-07 22:00:00","changed":"1475895236","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:53:56","alt":"Peralta-Yahya and students","file":{"fid":"204239","name":"py_and_students2.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/py_and_students2.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/py_and_students2.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":2605508,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/py_and_students2.jpg?itok=nLVOzw8q"}},"482801":{"id":"482801","type":"image","title":"Kuntal","body":null,"created":"1452204000","gmt_created":"2016-01-07 22:00:00","changed":"1475895236","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:53:56","alt":"Kuntal","file":{"fid":"204240","name":"lab_work.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/lab_work.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/lab_work.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":2164625,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/lab_work.jpg?itok=Ok1EA0C9"}}},"media_ids":["482781","482801"],"groups":[{"id":"1292","name":"Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB)"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/node\/jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications Officer II\u003Cbr \/\u003EParker H. Petit Institute for\u003Cbr \/\u003EBioengineering and Bioscience\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}