Genetic and metabolic engineering of microorganisms for the development of new flavor compounds from terpenic substrates

Throughout human history, natural products have been the basis for the discovery and development of therapeutics, cosmetic and food compounds used in industry. Many compounds found in natural organisms are rather difficult to chemically synthesize and to extract in large amounts, and in this respect, genetic and metabolic engineering are playing an increasingly important role in the production of these compounds, such as new terpenes and terpenoids, which may potentially be used to create aromas in industry. Terpenes belong to the largest class of natural compounds, are produced by all living organisms and play a fundamental role in human nutrition, cosmetics and medicine. Recent advances in systems biology and synthetic biology are allowing us to perform metabolic engineering at the whole-cell level, thus enabling the optimal design of microorganisms for the efficient production of drugs, cosmetic and food additives. This review describes the recent advances made in the genetic and metabolic engineering of the terpenes pathway with a particular focus on systems biotechnology.     

Assessing the Contribution of Marine Protected Areas to the Trophic Functioning of Ecosystems: A Model for the Banc d’Arguin and the Mauritanian Shelf

Most modelling studies addressed the effectiveness of marine protected areas (MPA) for fisheries sustainability through single species approach. Only a few models analysed the potential benefits of MPAs at the ecosystem level, estimating the potential export of fish biomass from the reserve or analysing the trophic relationships between organisms inside and outside the MPA. Here, we propose to use food web models to assess the contribution of a MPA to the trophic functioning of a larger ecosystem. This approach is applied to the Banc d’Arguin National Park, a large MPA located on the Mauritanian shelf. The ecosystem was modeled using Ecopath with Ecosim, a model that accounts for fisheries, food web structure, and some aspects of the spatial distribution of species, for the period 1991–2006. Gaps in knowledge and uncertainty were taken into account by building three different models. Results showed that the Banc d’Arguin contributes about 9 to 13% to the total consumption, is supporting about 23% of the total production and 18% of the total catch of the Mauritanian shelf ecosystem, and up to 50% for coastal fish. Of the 29 exploited groups, 15 depend on the Banc for more than 30% of their direct or indirect consumptions. Between 1991 and 2006, the fishing pressure increased leading to a decrease in biomass and the catch of high trophic levels, confirming their overall overexploitation. Ecosim simulations showed that adding a new fleet in the Banc d’Arguin would have large impacts on the species with a high reliance on the Banc for food, resulting in a 23% decrease in the current outside MPA catches. We conclude on the usefulness of food web models to assess MPAs contribution to larger ecosystem functioning.     

Sensor scheduling for <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-percent coverage in wireless sensor networks

We study sensor scheduling problems of p-percent coverage in this paper and propose two scheduling algorithms to prolong network lifetime due to the fact that for some applications full coverage is not necessary and different subareas of the monitored area may have different coverage requirements. Centralized p-Percent Coverage Algorithm (CPCA) we proposed is a centralized algorithm which selects the least number of nodes to monitor p-percent of the monitored area. Distributed p-Percent Coverage Protocol (DPCP) we represented is a distributed algorithm which can determine a set of nodes in a distributed manner to cover p-percent of the monitored area. Both of the algorithms can guarantee network connectivity. The simulation results show that our algorithms can remarkably prolong network lifetime, have less than 5% un-required coverage for large networks, and employ nodes fairly for most cases.