STRAIN IMPROVEMENT

The science and technology of manipulating and improving microbial strains, in order to
enhance their metabolic capacities

improve the microbes productivities or

characteristic
 What is strain?
• A strain is a subgroup of a species with one or
more characteristics that distinguish it from
other subgroups of the same species. Each
strain is identified by a name, number, or
letter.
For example: E. coli strain K12, E. coli strain
0157:H7

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 Purpose of the strain improvement

• Increase productivities

• To change unused co-metabolites

• To improve the use of carbon and nitrogen

sources

• To improve morphology of cells to be a better

cells in order to separate the cells and its products
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 How to optimize the microbe
productivity?
• Optimize environmental condition
Physical, chemical and biological
parameters
• Optimize nutrition of microorganism
• Genetic Modification : Mutation, gene
recombination, gene cloning

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 Process of strain improvement

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 Real challenge in natural variants?
• More heterogenous in nature
• Heterokaryons Vs Homokaryons (eg-mycelial
organism)
• Genetic changes and Cell division

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 When direct mutation preferred?
• Genes to be modified is known
• Organism is genetically documented
• Biosynthetic route is known
• Mechanism of the reactions is known
• Mechanism of control of their biosynthesis is
known as “Blueprint”
• Primary and secondary metabolite is already
known.
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 The selection of induced mutants

The selection of induced mutants synthesizing

improved levels of primary metabolites
•Mechanism of control of their biosynthesis
•The levels of primary metabolites in micro-
organisms are regulated by Feedback control
systems.
•The major systems involved are feedback
inhibition and feedback repression.
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• Feedback inhibition is the situation where the end
product of a biochemical pathway inhibits the
activity of an enzyme catalysing one of the
reactions (normally the first reaction) of the
pathway.
• Inhibition acts by the end product binding to the
enzyme at an allosteric site which results in
interference with the attachment of the enzyme to
its substrate.
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• Feedback repression is the situation where the end product (or
a derivative of the end product) of a biochemical pathway
prevents the synthesis of an enzyme (or enzymes) catalysing a
reaction (or reactions) of the pathway.

• Repression occurs at the gene level by a derivative of the end

product combining with the genome in such a way as to
prevent the transcription of the gene into messenger RNA, thus
resulting in the prevention of enzyme synthesis.

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 The control of a biosynthetic pathway
converting precursor A to end product E
via the intermediates B, C and D.

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 Concerted or multivalent feed back
control

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 Co-operative feed back control

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 Co-operative feed back control

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 Cumulative feed back control

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 Cumulative feed back control

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 Sequential feed back control

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 Sequential feed back control

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 Isoenzyme control

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 Isoenzyme control

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So, Mutants can be modified……..!
1. The organism may be modified such that the end
products which control the key enzymes of the
pathway are lost from the cell due to some
abnormality in the permeability of the cell membrane.

2. The organism may be modified such that it does

not produce the end products which control the
key enzymes of the pathway.

3. The organism may be modified such that it does

not recognize the presence of inhibiting or repressing
levels of the normal control metabolite
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