Volume 7 (2023): Issue 2 (April 2023)

Background: Current threats connected to the ongoing depletion of fossil resources and elevated levels of greenhouse gases accelerating climate change and global warming provoke a renaissance of biotechnological production of various organic bulk chemicals, which, particularly during the second half of the 20th century, were almost exclusively produced from fossil resources via chemosynthetic processes.

Scope: Besides the manufacture of bioethanol, a product obtained by microbial fermentation, biogenic production of solvents and energy carriers like acetone, isopropanol, 2,3-butanediol, or 1-butanol, hence, processes known since the beginning of the last century, experiences now a substantial revival.

Summary of new synthesis and conclusions reached in the review: The review illustrates how to produce these products by resorting to fossil raw materials instead of petrochemical production processes, and how this can be accomplished by the cultivation of anaerobic organisms, namely facultatively anaerobic yeasts and bacteria (production of ethanol or 2,3-butanediol), and strictly anaerobic Clostridia (1-butanol, acetone, or isopropanol) on renewable resources. Moreover, novel methods for producing biodiesel-like methyl-esters of aerobically produced bacterial polyhydroxyalkanoate biopolyester building blocks combine the synthesis of microbial biopolyesters from wastewater with the progress of innovative renewable energy carriers. The biochemical background, the current state of research and development, and the status of industrialization of these processes are reviewed.

Conclusion: Challenges to make these bioprocesses, based on inexpensive renewable resources, competitive with or even superior to petrochemical production routes in terms of sustainability, scalability, and economic feasibility still exist: however, they can be overcome by the concerted action of various scientific disciplines.

Bacteroides xylanisolvens Y-11 and Bifidobacterium longum y37 isolated from human gut were found to inhibit each other's growth after co-culturing in previous studies. To further reveal the potential mechanism of mutual inhibition between them, ultra performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) was used to investigate the metabolic changes of the strains after monoculture and co-culture, and the key differential metabolites were subject to the validation. The results showed that the types and amounts of metabolites were significantly changed during co-culture, with hydrocarbons and their derivatives, organic acids and esters being the main differential metabolites, which posed a greater influence on the metabolism of B. xylanisolvens Y-11 than on B. longumy y37. Further studies suggest that cycloserine and succinic acid may be the main metabolites that inhibit the growth of both strains, and the decrease of pH may be the main reason for succinic acid to inhibit the growth of the two strains. Moreover, B. longum y37 played a dominant role in the co-culture and its metabolites influenced the growth of B. xylanisolvens Y-11 to a greater extent. This study provides a new perspective for further understanding of the interaction between intestinal microbes and the influence of intestinal microecology on the occurrence and development of diseases.

Human coronaviruses (HCoVs), including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), also known as SARS-CoV-2, have caused global epidemics with high morbidity and mortality. Active research on finding effective drugs against 2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2 is going on. In silico screening represents the best approach for hits identification and could shorten the time and reduce cost compared to de novo drug discovery. Recently, CoV2 mutations have been a big concern in India, particularly on non-structural proteins (NSPs) and Spike Protein (B.1.617) which are the key targets that play a pivotal role in mediating viral replication and transcription. Herein, this study analyzed the NSPs and spike’s structural aspects of mutant strains of SARS-CoV-2. The three-dimensional structures of NSPs and S Spike proteins were retrieved from the protein data bank or modeled. And a dataset of an antiviral compound library containing 490,000 drug-like ligands and structurally diverse biologically active scaffolds was used for our studies. Initially, the molecular alignment was performed for library compounds with the reference drug molecule to find targets that match the field points. Antiviral compounds having a similarity score >0.6; were selected for further docking studies with wild and mutant NSPs and S Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.617. The docking studies identified a potent analog MA-11, which exhibited the highest binding affinity towards wild and mutant proteins. Further, molecular dynamics simulation studies of selected compounds confirmed their perfect fitting into NSP12 and spike active sites and offer direction for further lead optimization and rational drug design.