• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.10-16
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• 2012

The Streptomyces peucetius OIM (Overproducing Industrial Mutant) strain is a recursively-mutated and optimally-screened strain used for the industrial production of polyketide antibiotics, such as doxorubicin (DXR). Using the S. peucetius OIM mutant strain as a surrogate host, a model minimal polyketide pathway for aloesaponarin II, an actinorhodin shunt product, was cloned in a high-copy conjugative plasmid, followed by functional pathway expression and quantitative metabolite analysis. The level of aloesaponarin II production was noted as being significantly higher in the OIM strain than in the wild-type S. peucetius, as well as in the regulatory network-stimulated S. coelicolor mutant strain. Moreover, the aloesaponarin II production level was seen to be even higher in a down-regulator $wblA_{spe}$-deleted S. peucetius OIM strain, implying that the rationally-engineered S. peucetius OIM mutant strain could be used as an efficient surrogate host for the high expression of foreign polyketide pathways.

• Mycobiology
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.160-165
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• 2002

Aspergillus niger has been used as a host to express many heterologous proteins. It has been known that the presence of an- abundant protease is a limiting factor to express a heterologous protein. The protease deficient mutant of A. niger was obtained using UV-irradiation. A total of $1{\times}10^5$ spores were irradiated with $10{\sim}20%$ survival dose of UV, 600 $J/m^2$ at 280 nm, and the resulting spores were screened on the casein-gelatin plates. Ten putative protease deficient mutants showing the reduced halo area around colonies were further analyzed to differentiate the protease deficient mutant from other mutant types. Among ten putative mutants, seven mutants showed significant growth defect on nutrient rich medium and two mutants appeared to be the secretory mutants, which resulted in the impaired secretion of extracellular proteins including proteases. A mutant $pro^--20$ showed reduced halo zone without any notable changes in growth rate. In addition, the starchdegrading and glucose oxidase activities in the culture filtrate of $pro^--20$ mutant showed the similar range as that of the parental strain, which suggested that the $pro^--20$ mutant ought to be the protease deficient mutant rather than a secretory mutant. The reduced proteolytic activity of the $pro^--20$ was demonstrated using SDS-fibrin zymography gel. The reduced extracellular proteolysis was quantified by casein degradation assay and, comparing with the parental strain, less than 30% residual extracellular protease activity was detected in the culture filtrate of the $pro^--20$ mutant. The bio-activity of an exogenously supplemented hGM-CSF(human Granulocyte-Macrophage Colony Stimulating Factor) in the culture filtrate of $pro^--20$ mutant was detected until eight times more diluted preparations than that of the parental strain.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.32 no.11
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• pp.1485-1495
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• 2022

The development of a yeast strain capable of fermenting mixed sugars efficiently is crucial for producing biofuels and value-added materials from cellulosic biomass. Previously, a mutant Pichia stipitis YN14 strain capable of co-fermenting xylose and cellobiose was developed through evolutionary engineering of the wild-type P. stipitis CBS6054 strain, which was incapable of co-fermenting xylose and cellobiose. In this study, through genomic and transcriptomic analyses, we sought to investigate the reasons for the improved sugar metabolic performance of the mutant YN14 strain in comparison with the parental CBS6054 strain. Unfortunately, comparative whole-genome sequencing (WGS) showed no mutation in any of the genes involved in the cellobiose metabolism between the two strains. However, comparative RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) revealed that the YN14 strain had 101.2 times and 5.9 times higher expression levels of HXT2.3 and BGL2 genes involved in cellobiose metabolism, and 6.9 times and 75.9 times lower expression levels of COX17 and SOD2.2 genes involved in respiration, respectively, compared with the CBS6054 strain. This may explain how the YN14 strain enhanced cellobiose metabolic performance and shifted the direction of cellobiose metabolic flux from respiration to fermentation in the presence of cellobiose compared with the CBS6054 strain.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.379-385
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• 1997

Several protease-deficient mutants of Aspergillus niger have been isolated by halo-screening on skim milk plate after UV irradiation of conidiospores. The extracellular proteolytic activities of the mutant strains grown in an optimized medium varied from 3% to 85% of that of the parental strain. Especially, two mutant strains named as ANPD-129 and ANPD-153, which had 3% and 49% of acid protease activity of the parental strain, respectively, were further characterized both physiologically and genetically. The growth rates of the mutants, ANPD-129 and ANPD-153, were similar to that of the parental strain, unlike other protease-deficient mutants. The diploid formed between the two mutants restored protease activity to a similar level of that of the parental strain. This result revealed that ANPD-129 and ANPD-153 had mutations at different loci. Using master strains with marked chromosomes these loci were assigned to linkage groups. The mutation locus (prt129) in ANPD-129 was assigned to linkage group VI and the locus (prt153) in ANPD-153 to linkage group III.

• KSBB Journal
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.378-384
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• 1994

An improved method for the selective isolation of high-yielding mutant strains for the production of antifungal antibiotic KRF-001 was investigated. The mutant strain U. V 4, which produces high titer of KRF-001, was selected on the high potency agar plate after ultraviolet light irradiation. The U. V 4 strain produced 2-fold more KRF-001 than the mother strain in production media. Large scale fermentation was performed using the U. V 4 strain in 100$\ell$ fermenter. The antifungal antibiotic KRF-001 secreted into culture broth was detected by HPLC in 24hrs of fermentation.

• Mycobiology
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.159-163
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• 2013

A chemical mutagenesis technique was employed for development of mutant strains of Sparassis crispa targeting the shortened cultivation time and the high ${\beta}$-glucan content. The homogenized mycelial fragments of S. crispa IUM4010 strain were treated with 0.2 vol% methyl methanesulfonate, an alkylating agent, yielding 199 mutant strains. Subsequent screening in terms of growth and ${\beta}$-glucan content yielded two mutant strains, B4 and S7. Both mutants exhibited a significant increase in ${\beta}$-glucan productivity by producing 0.254 and 0.236 mg soluble ${\beta}$-glucan/mg dry cell weight for the B4 and S7 strains, respectively, whereas the wild type strain produced 0.102 mg soluble ${\beta}$-glucan/mg dry cell weight. The results demonstrate the usefulness of chemical mutagenesis for generation of mutant mushroom strains.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.442-449
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• 2004

Improving the light utilization efficiency of photosynthetic cells in photobioreactors (PBRs) is a major topic in algal biotechnology. Accordingly, in the current study we investigated the effect and suitability of photosynthetic pigment reduction for improving light utilization efficiency. The light-harvesting complex II (LH-II) genes of Rhodobacter sphaeroides were removed to construct a mutant strain with less pigment content. The mutant strain exhibited a slower growth rate than the wild-type under a low light intensity, while the mutant grew faster under a high light intensity. In addition, the specific absorption coefficient was lower in the mutant due to its reduced pigment content, thus it seemed that light penetrated deeper into its culture broth. However, the distance (light penetration depth) from the surface of the PBR to the compensation point did not increase, due to an increase in the compensation irradiance of the mutant strain. Experimental data showed that a reduced photosynthetic pigment content, which lessened the photoinhibition under high-intensity light, helped the volumetric productivity of photosynthetic microorganisms.

• Journal of Microbiology
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.244-250
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• 2005

The effect of cytochrome $c_{550}$ encoded by cccA in Bacillus subtilis during the event of sporulation was investigated. The sporulation of cccA-overexpressing mutant was significantly accelerated, while disruptant strain showed delayed sporulation in spite of the same growth rate. Activity of sporulation stage-0-specific enzyme, extracellular $\alpha-amylase$ of mutant strains was similar to that of the control strain, but cccA-overexpressing mutant exhibited higher activity of stage-II-specific alkaline phosphatase and stage-III-specific glucose dehydrogenase when compared to deletion mutant and control strain. Northern blot analysis also revealed that cccA-overexpressing mutant showed high level of spo0A transcripts, while the disruptant rarely expressed spo0A. These results suggested that although cytochrome $c_{550}$ is dispensable for growth and sporulation, expression of cccA may play an important role for initiation of sporulation through regulation of spo0A expression.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.1017-1021
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• 2004

To isolate a mutant which overproduces threonine and tryptophan, mutants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae were screened after UV and EMS mutagenesis. Hydroxynorvaline, a Thr analogue was used for selection of a Thr-overproducing mutant after UV mutagenesis. Among 31 mutants, TC 5-1 was selected as the strain candidate, based on amino acid analysis. TC 5-1 was then treated by EMS mutagenesis for Trp overproduction. Eight mutants were selected using fluorotryptophan for Thr and Trp overproducing strains. Amino acid analysis results showed that TC 6-1 was the best strain since it had the highest amount of Thr and Trp among mutants.