Congratulations Michal!
Tuesday 5 July DynaMo PhD scholar Michal Poborsky defended his PhD thesis and was awarded the PhD degree with a top performance.
In front of colleagues and friends, Michal Poborsky successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled ‘Engineering Escherichia coli towards production of plant specialized metabolites’.
Michal Poborsky after the defense with his supervisors Professor Barbara Ann Halkier and Facility Manager Christoph Crocoll. Michal had just received the traditional PhD hat from his DynaMo colleagues.
Summary
Plant specialized metabolites are an incredibly diverse group of natural products and the native plant producers often pose a challenge as they accumulate specialized metabolites at low amounts and through a tightly-regulated, complex biosynthetic pathways. To overcome these hurdles, the intersection of metabolic engineering and synthetic biology aims to realize the production of natural products in microbial cell factories.
Glucosinolates are amino acid-derived and sulfur-rich specialized metabolites characteristic of brassicaceous plants. Recognized as promoters of human health, some glucosinolates attract attention as potential nutraceuticals. In this thesis, Michal presents a systematic engineering of the complex glucosinolate biosynthetic pathway in Escherichia coli.
Michal address the major challenges associated with glucosinolate production in bacteria. He started by engineering the expression of two ER-bound cytochrome P450 enzymes, CYP79 and CYP83, that control the entrance to the glucosinolate pathway. He then focused on establishing sufficient cofactor supply to support high product titers. Finally, Michal screened natural homologs of the pathway enzymes with improved substrate specificity to increase pathway throughput and overcome by-product formation.
Following these principles, he showed the first successful bacterial production of indolyl-3-methyl and p-hydroxybutyl glucosinolates, and reported the biosynthesis of indolyl-3-methyl glucosinolate reaching 561 mg/L, the highest glucosinolate titer in microbes to date.
Michal holds an MSc in Protein Engineering of Fatty Acid Hydratases from Aarhus University in 2017 and a BSc in Analysis of Nucleic Acids Using Mass Spectrometry Techniques from University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague.
His PhD supervisors were Head of DynaMo Professor Barbara Ann Halkier and Facility Manager Christoph Crocoll. Michal will continue as Postdoc at the DynaMo Center from 1 Sept.
Congratulations Michal!