Imperial College London
Portrait Picture

Tom Ellis

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Bioengineering

Professor of Synthetic Genome Engineering
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 7615t.ellis Website CV

 
 
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Location

 

704Bessemer BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Gowers:2020:10.1038/s41467-020-14708-z,
author = {Gowers, G and Chee, S and Bell, D and Suckling, L and Kern, M and Tew, D and McClymont, D and Ellis, T},
doi = {10.1038/s41467-020-14708-z},
journal = {Nature Communications},
title = {Improved betulinic acid biosynthesis using synthetic yeast chromosome recombination and semi-automated rapid LC-MS screening},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14708-z},
volume = {11},
year = {2020}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Synthetic biology, genome engineering and directed evolution offer innumerable tools to expedite engineering of strains for optimising biosynthetic pathways. One of the most radical is SCRaMbLE, a system of inducible in vivo deletion and rearrangement of synthetic yeast chromosomes, diversifying the genotype of millions of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells in hours. SCRaMbLE can yield strains with improved biosynthetic phenotypes but is limited by screening capabilities. To address this bottleneck, we combine automated sample preparation, an ultra-fast 84-second LC-MS method, and barcoded nanopore sequencing to rapidly isolate and characterise the best performing strains. Here, we use SCRaMbLE to optimise yeast strains engineered to produce the triterpenoid betulinic acid. Our semi-automated workflow screens 1,000 colonies, identifying and sequencing 12 strains with between 2- to 7-fold improvement in betulinic acid titre. The broad applicability of this workflow to rapidly isolate improved strains from a variant library makes this a valuable tool for biotechnology.
AU  - Gowers,G
AU  - Chee,S
AU  - Bell,D
AU  - Suckling,L
AU  - Kern,M
AU  - Tew,D
AU  - McClymont,D
AU  - Ellis,T
DO  - 10.1038/s41467-020-14708-z
PY  - 2020///
SN  - 2041-1723
TI  - Improved betulinic acid biosynthesis using synthetic yeast chromosome recombination and semi-automated rapid LC-MS screening
T2  - Nature Communications
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14708-z
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/77035
VL  - 11
ER  -
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