TY - CHAP A1 - Kunte, Hans-Jörg A1 - Schwarz, T. A1 - Galinski, E. A. ED - Lee, N. M. T1 - The compatible solute ectoine: protection mechanisms, strain development, and industrial production T2 - Biotechnological Applications of Extremophilic Microorganisms N2 - Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya can adapt to saline environments by accumulating compatible solutes in order to maintain an osmotic equilibrium. Compatible solutes are of diverse chemical structure (sugars, polyols, amino acid derivatives) and are beneficial for bacterial cells not only as osmoregulatory solutes but also as protectants of proteins by mitigating detrimental effects of freezing, drying, and high temperatures. The aspartate derivative ectoine is a widespread compatible solute in Bacteria and possesses additional protective properties compared with other compatible solutes and stabilizes even whole cells against stresses such as ultraviolet radiation or cytotoxins. Here, it is our intention to go beyond a simple description of effects, but to depict the molecular interaction of ectoine with biomolecules, such as proteins, membranes, and DNA and explain the underlying principles. The stabilizing properties of ectoine attracted industry, which saw the potential to market ectoine as a novel active component in health care products and cosmetics. In joint efforts of industry and research, a large-scale fermentation procedure has been developed with the halophilic bacterium Halomonas elongata used as a producer strain. The development and application of ectoine-excreting mutants from H. elongata (“leaky” mutants) allow for the annual production of ectoine on a scale of tons. The details of the strain development and fermentation processes will be introduced. KW - Ectoine KW - Biotechnology KW - Compatible solute KW - Preferential exclusion KW - Osmophobic effect PY - 2020 SN - 978-3-11-042773-8 SP - 121 EP - 136 PB - De Gruyter AN - OPUS4-51472 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Oberpaul, M. A1 - Spohn, M. A1 - Fracowiak, J. A1 - Plarre, Rüdiger A1 - McMahon, Dino Peter A1 - Hammann, P. A1 - Vilcinskas, A. A1 - Gläser, J. T1 - Exploiting termite nest microbiomes for antibiotic discovery by using an ultra-high throughput Microfluidics/FACS driven pipeline combined with a microtiter plate based cultivation strategy N2 - Infections with multi-resistant Gram negative pathogens are a major threat to our health system. In order to serve the needs in antibiotics development we selected untapped bioresources and implemented high throughput approaches suitable for the discovery of strains producing antibiotics with anti-Gram negative activity. Our approaches rely on the hypothesis that Termite associated bacteria are likely to produce potent antibiotics to defend their hosts against entomopathogenic microorganisms. Termite nests and guts harbor suitable, highly diverse microbiomes in which bacterial taxa are present known to potentially produce natural compounds. In a first step the diversity of Coptotermes species nest microbiomes was assessed carefully by using 16S rDNA amplicon sequencing on the Illumina MiSeq platform and nest material was selected to retrieve viable cells by using Nycodenz density gradient centrifugation. In order to analyze the diversity of the culturable termite nest microbiome, bacterial cells were either distributed in 384-well plates (approach 1) or encapsulated in small spheric agarose beads by an high throughput microfluidics technique (approach 2). Cultures obtained from approach 1 were scaled-up in 96-well Duetz-systems for characterization of diversity and for rapid supernatant screening using the bioluminescence-labeled E. coli pFU166. The generated droplets of approach 2 simultaneously received a small population of GFP-tagged Gram negative screening cells and were sorted for low fluorescence using FACS. After elimination of redundancy we performed a fast scale-up of active strains. Implementation of this pipeline allows us to prioritize antibiotics producing strains in a ultra-high throughput fashion and by cultivation of broad diversity in our approches. T2 - Annual Conference of the Society for General and Applied Microbiology (VAAM) CY - Wolfsburg, Germany DA - 15.04.18 KW - Biotechnology KW - Termites KW - Anti-microbial effects PY - 2018 AN - OPUS4-44987 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -