Journal Article
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 117, iss. 17, pp. 9302-9310, 2020
Authors
Davinia Salvachúa, Allison Z. Werner, Isabel Pardo, Martyna Michalska, Brenna A. Black, Bryon S. Donohoe, Stefan J. Haugen, Rui Katahira, Sandra Notonier, Kelsey J. Ramirez, Antonella Amore, Samuel O. Purvine, Erika M. Zink, Paul E. Abraham, Richard J. Giannone, Suresh Poudel, Philip D. Laible, Robert L. Hettich, Gregg T. Beckham
Abstract
Significance
The valorization of the plant polymer lignin is critical to enable the bioeconomy, but the heterogeneity of lignin presents a barrier to its use. Natural microbial conversion processes funnel aromatic compound mixtures to single products and thus, have emerged as a means to overcome lignin heterogeneity. Accordingly, understanding the mechanisms that bacteria use to convert lignin degradation products is of importance for their eventual industrial application. Here, we demonstrate that a promising bacterial chassis for lignin-relevant synthetic biology,
Pseudomonas putida
, secretes outer membrane vesicles that turn over aromatic compounds extracellularly. From this work, we propose a mechanism for extracellular nutrient acquisition from aromatic compounds by soil bacteria, which holds promise for improving the efficiency of microbial lignin conversion.
