Developing an enzyme selection tool supporting multiple hosts contexts

Abstract

Engineering biological organisms that allow the integration of alternative metabolic pathways to natural ones is one of the goals of synthetic biology. Based on this, some of the most attractive applications in terms of synthetic organisms manufacture include the production of a wide range of pharmacologically useful metabolites produced in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way. Also, the biostable molecules green-production involves different types of therapeutic processes, e.g. prostheses and grafts stabilisation. Regarding the viability of genetically modified organisms, metabolic pathways must be first properly designed, taking into consideration the type of host organism that will be involved in metabolic production, as well as its biochemical and environmental conditions. To ensure the correct growth of these synthetic organisms, the enzyme selection must guarantee both the organism survival (and proliferation) and the optimal production of the desired metabolite. Developing enzyme selection tools is essential to enhance and make cost-effective the metabolic pathways design. This technical note presents the update of Selenzyme, the enzyme selection tool which is based on organisms taxonomic compatibility and allows appropriate enzyme selection considering its amino acid sequence. The purpose of the update is to allow multiple host input, in order to perform an affinity comparison between target organisms and each host. The affinity differences will depend on which host to be considered, allowing the user to select the optimal host for the enzyme concerned.