Hiring in life sciences? Share your open positions with our professional community. Read more Close

Advertisement

Rhodo-Box: a Synthetic Biology Toolbox to Facilitate Metabolic Engineering of Rhodobacter sphaeroides

Created on 03 Nov 2025

Authors

Kostanjsek, M., Raynal, A., Dimopoulos, G., Behrendt, G., Martins dos Santos, V. A. P., Beekwilder, J., Batianis, C., Weusthuis, R. A., Asin-Garcia, E., Bisschops, M. M. M.

Abstract

Rhodobacter sphaeroides is a purple non-sulphur alphaproteobacterium with a highly versatile metabolism. This microorganism holds promise as a chassis for sustainable biomanufacturing of numerous chemicals. Yet, its potential is constrained by a lack of standardized, well-characterized genetic elements to tune gene expression such as transcriptional promoters and ribosome binding sites (RBSs). In this study, we present Rhodo-Box, a comprehensive toolkit for R. sphaeroides created by adapting and extending the Zymo-Parts modular cloning framework. Using Rhodo-Box we built and characterized: (a) three broad-host origins of replication (pBBR1, RK2 and RSF1010), (b) a set of 13 promoters, (c) four inducible expression systems (NahR-PsalTTC, LacI-PlacT7A1_O3O4, VanR-PvanCC, and XylS-Pm), (d) 11 RBSs, and (e) four transcriptional terminators. Furthermore, we present a semi-automated, user-friendly cloning approach which enables rapid construction of R. sphaeroides strains. The Rhodo-Box toolkit equips R. sphaeroides with a standardized, automation-compatible collection of parts and workflows essential for efficient design-build-test-learn cycles and advanced metabolic engineering.

Preprint server: bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 03 Nov 2025.

Advertisement

Stats

  • Community rating n/a 0 votes
  • Your rating

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this preprint? Sign in in to submit your rating.

  • Recommendations n/a n/a positive of 0 vote(s)
  • Views 49
  • Comments 0

Recommended by

  • No recommendations yet.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.

Advertisement