The role of membrane transport in metabolic engineering of plant primary metabolism

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Highlights► The plastidial pyruvate transporter in plants is driven by sodium symport. ► The mitochondrial pyruvate transporter MPC has been identified. ► All transporters needed for a synthetic PEP-CK/C₄ photosynthetic cycle are now known. ► The SWEET proteins define a new class of sugar efflux carriers in plants.     

Electrobiocommodities: powering microbial production of fuels and commodity chemicals from carbon dioxide with electricity

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Highlights► Microbes can efficiently reduce CO₂ to organic commodities with electrical energy. ► Direct electrode-to-microbe electron transfer can support anaerobic CO₂ respiration. ► Electrochemically generated H₂ can support anaerobic or aerobic CO₂ reduction. ► Anaerobic CO₂ respiration yields high recovery of electrons in organic commodities. ► If scalable, electrobiocommodities could revolutionize biocommodity production.     

The interplay between microevolution and community structure in microbial populations

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Highlights► The action of industrial processes depends on microbial community structure. ► Microbes evolve very rapidly. ► Microbial evolution is affected by community structure. ► Community structure is affected by microbial evolution. ► This feedback may be crucial when considering microbial communities in industry.     

Plant–bacteria interactions in the removal of pollutants

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Highlights► Rhizobacteria degrade a wide range of pollutants and efficiently colonize plant roots. ► Plants have an effect on the selection of their own rhizospheric microorganisms. ► Catabolic pathways can be induced by natural secondary plant products. ► Horizontal gene transfer has an important role in bioremediation. ► Manipulation of plant/microbe interactions could improve rhizoremediation outcomes.     

Progress in understanding and engineering primary plant metabolism

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Highlights► Crop yield depends on efficiency of conversion of light energy into biomass. ► Models have estimated energy conversion efficiency in photosynthesis and metabolism. ► Research is exploring strategies to modify or suppress photorespiration. ► Energy loss during conversion of photosynthate to biomass is also large ► Research is addressing uncertainties over where these losses occur.     

Perspectives on the contribution of lactic acid bacteria to cheese flavor development

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Highlights► This review covers current know-how on cheese flavor development. ► Proteolysis, autolysis and amino acid catabolism by lactic acid bacteria are discussed. ► Systems biology approaches will drive future technology improvements. ► Next-generation sequencing holds promise for fast increase in exploitable knowledge. ► Culture heterogeneity may be significant for industrial flavor production by LAB.     

Pangenomics – an avenue to improved industrial starter cultures and probiotics

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Highlights► Genome sequencing is an efficient, cost-effective way of characterizing microbes. ► Pangenome analysis gives new insight into texture formation in yoghurt. ► Pangenome analysis of probiotic strains has identified new effect or molecules. ► Pangenome analysis gives insight into probiotic–host specificity. ► Future perspectives include improved strains for food fermentations and probiotics.     

Stable isotope-assisted metabolomics to detect metabolic flux changes in mammalian cell cultures

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Highlights► Stable isotope-assisted metabolomics is powerful to determine metabolic fluxes. ► Stable isotope-assisted metabolomics is more complex for mammalian cell cultures. ► Biotechnological processes can be improved by assessing metabolic flux changes. ► Metabolic flux analysis is an attractive tool for toxicity studies. ► There is a huge potential for future applications on mammalian systems.     

The emerging field of transport engineering of plant specialized metabolites

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Highlights► Transport engineering has the potential to increase nutritional value of crops. ► Transport engineering can increase yield of synthetic biology approaches. ► Neo-functionalization of primary metabolite transporters to specialized metabolism. ► Elimination of glucosinolate seed accumulation is achieved via transport engineering. ► Glucosinolates in Arabidopsis: a model for transport of specialized metabolites.     

Metagenomics of microbial life in extreme temperature environments

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Highlights► Metagenomic microbial community characterization. ► Extreme environment microbiology. ► High and low temperature adaptation.     

Metal-based methods for protein inactivation

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Highlights► The irreversible inactivation of protein targets by metal complexes is described. ► The article summaries catalysts that hydrolyze or oxidize proteins. ► Cyclen-based catalysts that selectively hydrolyze peptides and proteins are described. ► Catalysts that generate reactive oxygen species are important for protein inactivation. ► Metal-based oxidants are potent and selective agents for protein inactivation.     

Human milk and related oligosaccharides as prebiotics

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Highlights► The intestinal microbiome is recognized as an important determinant of health. ► Galacto-oligosaccharides are non-digestible carbohydrates. ► Galacto-oligosaccharides stimulate growth and activity of gut bacteria. ► Subtle differences in structure can result in significant differences in activity. ► Less abundant oligosaccharides from bovine milk are similar to those from human milk.     

Traditional biotechnology for new foods and beverages

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Highlights► Fermentation is being adopted by many companies for new and natural products. ► Fermentation is increasingly used as sustainable alternative for existing food processing. ► Innovation is achieved by applying traditional fermentation processes for novel substrates.     

Clawing back: broadening the notion of metal chelators in medicine

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Highlights► Not all chelators are the same: more than metal sequestration and elimination. ► Metal chelates can redistribute metals across biological membranes. ► Metal-chelating fragments provide leads for metalloenzyme inhibition. ► Metal chelation can enhance metal reactivity and thus cytotoxicity. ► Prochelators provide site-activated metal chelation and passivation.     

Subcommunity FTIR-spectroscopy to determine physiological cell states

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Highlights► FTIR spectroscopy for the analysis of the biochemical composition of phytoplankton. ► Cell separation by sorting for subsequent FTIR analysis. ► Measurement from subcommunities of natural phytoplankton samples. ► Physiological traits investigated by interpretation of FTIR spectra. ► Under the phytoplankton cell response to abiotic and biotic conditions.     

Enzyme and metabolic engineering for the production of novel biopolymers: crossover of biological and chemical processes

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Highlights► Poly(ω-hydroxy fatty acids) are polyethylene-like biobased polyester. ► Medium-chain-length polyhydroxyalkanoate homopolymers are processed to stretchy film. ► Microbial lactate-based polyesters exhibit transparent and flexible properties. ► Enzyme and metabolic engineering facilitates the expanding of bio-based polymers.     

Nanotechnology meets electrophysiology

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Highlights► We focus on the latest developments in nanotechnology-based electrophysiology. ► Methods for extracellular recording via nanoFET-based devices are described. ► Metal nanoelectrodes for the recording of electrogenic cells are reviewed. ► The latest developments of intracellular FET-based probes are shortly covered. ► Pioneering electrical scaffold devices for the interfacing with tissues are described.     

Computational methods for evaluation of cell-based data assessment—Bioconductor

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Highlights► Bioconductor proposes more than 20 R packages for FCM analysis. ► Data infrastructure proposed by flowCore has become the standard for many packages. ► Automated gating is improving but remains an intensive field of research.     

Plant genome-scale metabolic reconstruction and modelling

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Highlights► Recent advances have been made on plant genome-scale metabolic reconstruction. ► Cellular compartmentation makes plant genome-scale reconstruction challenging. ► Current reconstructions capture important features of plant metabolism. ► The models have been used to study isolated tissues and tissue interaction. ► We review the challenges and potential of plant reconstruction and modelling.