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Effect of antibiotic treatment on the formation of non-spore Clostridium difficile persister-like cells (2018)
Journal Article
Álvarez, R., Inostroza, O., Garavaglia, M., Minton, N. P., Paredes-Sabja, D., & Gil, F. (2018). Effect of antibiotic treatment on the formation of non-spore Clostridium difficile persister-like cells. Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, 73(9), 2396-2399. https://doi.org/10.1093/jac/dky186

Background: The spore is the virulence factor identified to be involved in the recurrence of the disease caused by Clostridium difficile. Objectives: To demonstrate that lethal antibiotic concentrations induce the appearance of C. difficile persister... Read More about Effect of antibiotic treatment on the formation of non-spore Clostridium difficile persister-like cells.

The butanol producing microbe Clostridium beijerinckii NCIMB 14988 manipulated using forward and reverse genetic tools (2018)
Journal Article
Little, G. T., Willson, B. J., Heap, J. T., Winzer, K., & Minton, N. P. (2018). The butanol producing microbe Clostridium beijerinckii NCIMB 14988 manipulated using forward and reverse genetic tools. Biotechnology Journal, https://doi.org/10.1002/biot.201700711

The solventogenic anaerobe Clostridium beijerinckii has potential for use in the sustainable bioconversion of plant-derived carbohydrates into solvents, such as butanol or acetone. However, relatively few strains have been extensively characterised e... Read More about The butanol producing microbe Clostridium beijerinckii NCIMB 14988 manipulated using forward and reverse genetic tools.

A transcription factor-based biosensor for detection of itaconic acid (2018)
Journal Article
Hanko, E. K., Minton, N. P., & Malys, N. (2018). A transcription factor-based biosensor for detection of itaconic acid. ACS Synthetic Biology, 7(5), 1436–1446. https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.8b00057

Itaconic acid is an important platform chemical that can easily be incorporated into polymers and has the potential to replace petrochemical-based acrylic or methacrylic acid. A number of microorganisms have been developed for the biosynthesis of ita... Read More about A transcription factor-based biosensor for detection of itaconic acid.

Quantitative isotope-dilution high-resolution-mass-apectrometry analysis of multiple intracellular metabolites in Clostridium autoethanogenum with uniformly 13C-labeled standards derived from Spirulina (2018)
Journal Article
Schatschneider, S., Abdelrazig, S. M., Safo, L., Henstra, A. M., Millat, T., Kim, D., …Barrett, D. A. (2018). Quantitative isotope-dilution high-resolution-mass-apectrometry analysis of multiple intracellular metabolites in Clostridium autoethanogenum with uniformly 13C-labeled standards derived from Spirulina. Analytical Chemistry, 90(7), https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.7b04758

We have investigated the applicability of commercially available lyophilized spirulina (Arthrospira platensis), a microorganism uniformly labeled with 13C, as a readily accessible source of multiple 13C-labeled metabolites suitable as internal standa... Read More about Quantitative isotope-dilution high-resolution-mass-apectrometry analysis of multiple intracellular metabolites in Clostridium autoethanogenum with uniformly 13C-labeled standards derived from Spirulina.

Advances in metabolic engineering in the microbial production of fuels and chemicals from C1 gas (2018)
Journal Article
Humphreys, C. M., & Minton, N. P. (in press). Advances in metabolic engineering in the microbial production of fuels and chemicals from C1 gas. Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 50, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copbio.2017.12.023

The future sustainable production of chemicals and fuels from non-petrochemical sources, while at the same time reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, represent two of society's greatest challenges. Microbial chassis able to grow on waste carbon mo... Read More about Advances in metabolic engineering in the microbial production of fuels and chemicals from C1 gas.

Upscaling Diffusion Through First-Order Volumetric Sinks: A Homogenization of Bacterial Nutrient Uptake (2018)
Journal Article
Dalwadi, M. P., Wang, Y., King, J. R., & Minton, N. P. (2018). Upscaling Diffusion Through First-Order Volumetric Sinks: A Homogenization of Bacterial Nutrient Uptake. SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, 78(3), 1300-1329. https://doi.org/10.1137/17m1138625

In mathematical models that include nutrient delivery to bacteria, it is prohibitively expensive to include a pointwise nutrient uptake within small bacterial regions over bioreactor length-scales, and so such models often impose an effective uptake... Read More about Upscaling Diffusion Through First-Order Volumetric Sinks: A Homogenization of Bacterial Nutrient Uptake.

Characterization of the impact of rpoB mutations on the in vitro and in vivo competitive fitness of Clostridium difficile and susceptibility to fidaxomicin (2017)
Journal Article
Kuehne, S. A., Dempster, A. W., Collery, M. M., Joshi, N., Jowett, J., Kelly, M. L., …Minton, N. P. (2018). Characterization of the impact of rpoB mutations on the in vitro and in vivo competitive fitness of Clostridium difficile and susceptibility to fidaxomicin. Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, 73(4), 973-980. https://doi.org/10.1093/jac/dkx486

Objectives To establish the role of specific, non-synonymous SNPs in the RNA polymerase ? subunit (rpoB) gene in reducing the susceptibility of Clostridium difficile to fidaxomicin and to explore the potential in vivo significance of rpoB mutant str... Read More about Characterization of the impact of rpoB mutations on the in vitro and in vivo competitive fitness of Clostridium difficile and susceptibility to fidaxomicin.

13C-assisted metabolic flux analysis to investigate heterotrophic and mixotrophic metabolism in Cupriavidus necator H16 (2017)
Journal Article
Alagesan, S., Minton, N. P., & Malys, N. (2018). 13C-assisted metabolic flux analysis to investigate heterotrophic and mixotrophic metabolism in Cupriavidus necator H16. Metabolomics, 14(9), https://doi.org/10.1007/s11306-017-1302-z

Introduction. Cupriavidus necator H16 is a gram-negative bacterium, capable of lithoautotrophic growth by utilizing hydrogen as an energy source and fixing carbon dioxide (CO2) through Calvin-Benson-Bassham (CBB) cycle. The potential to utilize synth... Read More about 13C-assisted metabolic flux analysis to investigate heterotrophic and mixotrophic metabolism in Cupriavidus necator H16.

Applying asymptotic methods to synthetic biology: modelling the reaction kinetics of the mevalonate pathway (2017)
Journal Article
Dalwadi, M. P., Garavaglia, M., Webb, J. P., King, J. R., & Minton, N. P. (2018). Applying asymptotic methods to synthetic biology: modelling the reaction kinetics of the mevalonate pathway. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 439, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2017.11.022

The mevalonate pathway is normally found in eukaryotes, and allows for the production of isoprenoids, a useful class of organic compounds. This pathway has been successfully introduced to Escherichia coli, enabling a biosynthetic production route for... Read More about Applying asymptotic methods to synthetic biology: modelling the reaction kinetics of the mevalonate pathway.

Multi-timescale analysis of a metabolic network in synthetic biology: a kinetic model for 3-hydroxypropionic acid production via beta-alanine (2017)
Journal Article
Dalwadi, M. P., King, J. R., & Minton, N. P. (2018). Multi-timescale analysis of a metabolic network in synthetic biology: a kinetic model for 3-hydroxypropionic acid production via beta-alanine. Journal of Mathematical Biology, 77(1), 165-199. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00285-017-1189-3

A biosustainable production route for 3-hydroxypropionic acid (3HP), an important platform chemical, would allow 3HP to be produced without using fossil fuels. We are interested in investigating a potential biochemical route to 3HP from pyruvate thro... Read More about Multi-timescale analysis of a metabolic network in synthetic biology: a kinetic model for 3-hydroxypropionic acid production via beta-alanine.

Recombinant expression and characterisation of the oxygen-sensitive 2-enoate reductase from Clostridium sporogenes (2017)
Journal Article
Mordaka, P. M., Hall, S. J., Minton, N. P., & Stephens, G. (in press). Recombinant expression and characterisation of the oxygen-sensitive 2-enoate reductase from Clostridium sporogenes. Microbiology, https://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.000568

‘Ene’-reductases have attracted significant attention for the preparation of chemical intermediates and biologically active products. To date, research has been focussed primarily on Old Yellow Enzyme-like proteins, due to their ease of handling, whe... Read More about Recombinant expression and characterisation of the oxygen-sensitive 2-enoate reductase from Clostridium sporogenes.

Improving gene transfer in Clostridium pasteurianum through the isolation of rare hypertransformable variants (2017)
Journal Article
Grosse-Honebrink, A., Schwarz, K., Wang, H., Minton, N. P., & Zhang, Y. (2017). Improving gene transfer in Clostridium pasteurianum through the isolation of rare hypertransformable variants. Anaerobe, 48, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anaerobe.2017.09.001

Effective microbial metabolic engineering is reliant on efficient gene transfer. Here we present a simple screening strategy that may be deployed to isolate rare, hypertransformable variants. The procedure was used to increase the frequency of transf... Read More about Improving gene transfer in Clostridium pasteurianum through the isolation of rare hypertransformable variants.

Exposing hidden putative lipoproteins in Clostridium difficile (2017)
Presentation / Conference
Griffin, R., & Minton, N. P. (2017, August). Exposing hidden putative lipoproteins in Clostridium difficile. Poster presented at ClostPath 10th International Conference on the Molecular Biology and Pathogenesis of the Clostrida, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Characterisation of a 3-hydroxypropionic acid-inducible system from Pseudomonas putida for orthogonal gene expression control in Escherichia coli and Cupriavidus necator (2017)
Journal Article
Hanko, E. K., Minton, N. P., & Malys, N. (in press). Characterisation of a 3-hydroxypropionic acid-inducible system from Pseudomonas putida for orthogonal gene expression control in Escherichia coli and Cupriavidus necator. Scientific Reports, 7, Article 1724. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-01850-w

3-hydroxypropionic acid (3-HP) is an important platform chemical used as a precursor for production of added-value compounds such as acrylic acid. Metabolically engineered yeast, Escherichia coli, cyanobacteria and other microorganisms have been deve... Read More about Characterisation of a 3-hydroxypropionic acid-inducible system from Pseudomonas putida for orthogonal gene expression control in Escherichia coli and Cupriavidus necator.

Microbial solvent formation revisited by comparative genome analysis (2017)
Journal Article
Poehlein, A., Solano, J. D. M., Flitsch, S. K., Krabben, P., Winzer, K., Reid, S. J., …Dürre, P. (2017). Microbial solvent formation revisited by comparative genome analysis. Biotechnology for Biofuels, 10, Article 58. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13068-017-0742-z

Background: Microbial formation of acetone, isopropanol, and butanol is largely restricted to bacteria belonging to the genus Clostridium. This ability has been industrially exploited over the last 100 years. The solvents are important feedstocks for... Read More about Microbial solvent formation revisited by comparative genome analysis.

Towards improved butanol production through targeted genetic modification of Clostridium pasteurianum (2017)
Journal Article
Schwarz, K., Grosse-Honebrink, A., Derecka, K., Rotta, C., Zhang, Y., & Minton, N. P. (2017). Towards improved butanol production through targeted genetic modification of Clostridium pasteurianum. Metabolic Engineering, 40, 124-137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ymben.2017.01.009

Declining fossil fuel reserves, coupled with environmental concerns over their continued extraction and exploitation have led to strenuous efforts to identify renewable routes to energy and fuels. One attractive option is to convert glycerol, a by-pr... Read More about Towards improved butanol production through targeted genetic modification of Clostridium pasteurianum.

Metabolic engineering of Clostridium autoethanogenum for selective alcohol production (2017)
Journal Article
Liew, F., Henstra, A. M., Kӧpke, M., Winzer, K., Simpson, S. D., & Minton, N. P. (2017). Metabolic engineering of Clostridium autoethanogenum for selective alcohol production. Metabolic Engineering, 40, 104-114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ymben.2017.01.007

Gas fermentation using acetogenic bacteria such as Clostridium autoethanogenum offers an attractive route for production of fuel ethanol from industrial waste gases. Acetate reduction to acetaldehyde and further to ethanol via an aldehyde: ferredoxin... Read More about Metabolic engineering of Clostridium autoethanogenum for selective alcohol production.

Development of Clostridium difficile R20291?PaLoc model strains and in vitro methodologies reveals CdtR is required for the production of CDT to cytotoxic levels (2017)
Journal Article
Bilverstone, T., Kinsmore, N., Minton, N. P., & Kuehne, S. A. (in press). Development of Clostridium difficile R20291?PaLoc model strains and in vitro methodologies reveals CdtR is required for the production of CDT to cytotoxic levels. Anaerobe, 44, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anaerobe.2017.01.009

Assessing the regulation of Clostridium difficile transferase (CDT), is complicated by the presence of a Pathogenicity locus (PaLoc) which encodes Toxins A and B. Here we developed R20291?PaLoc model strains and cell-based assays to quantify CDT-medi... Read More about Development of Clostridium difficile R20291?PaLoc model strains and in vitro methodologies reveals CdtR is required for the production of CDT to cytotoxic levels.

What's a SNP between friends: The influence of single nucleotide polymorphisms on virulence and phenotypes of Clostridium difficile strain 630 and derivatives (2016)
Journal Article
Collery, M. M., Kuehne, S. A., McBride, S. M., Kelly, M. L., Monot, M., Cockayne, A., …Minton, N. P. (2017). What's a SNP between friends: The influence of single nucleotide polymorphisms on virulence and phenotypes of Clostridium difficile strain 630 and derivatives. Virulence, 8(6), 767-781. https://doi.org/10.1080/21505594.2016.1237333

Clostridium difficile is a major cause of antibiotic induced diarrhoea worldwide, responsible for significant annual mortalities and represents a considerable economic burden on healthcare systems. The two main C. difficile virulence factors are toxi... Read More about What's a SNP between friends: The influence of single nucleotide polymorphisms on virulence and phenotypes of Clostridium difficile strain 630 and derivatives.