Fei Tao

• PhD
• Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Given the threat to public health posed by antibiotic resistance transmission, environmental monitoring is essential for tracking antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Houseflies, being ubiquitous organisms capable of carrying and disseminating ARGs, serve as suitable indicators for environmental monitoring. In this study, we employ metagenomic appro...

Transmembrane potassium ion channels are crucial for ion transport, metabolism, and signaling, and serve as promising targets for anti-cancer therapies. However, their hydrophobic transmembrane nature requires detergents, posing a major bottleneck for experimental handling. In this paper, we present a structural bioinformatics study of six experime...

Membrane proteins are critical to biological processes and central to life sciences and modern medicine. However, membrane proteins are notoriously challenging to study, mainly owing to difficulties dictated by their highly hydrophobic nature. Previously, we reported QTY code, which is a simple method for designing water-soluble membrane proteins....

Human ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters are one of the largest families of membrane proteins and perform diverse functions. Many of them are associated with multidrug resistance that often results in cancer treatment with poor outcomes. Here, we present the structural bioinformatics study of six human ABC membrane transporters with experiment...

Robust chassis are critical to facilitate advances in synthetic biology. This study describes a comprehensive characterization of a new yeast isolate Saccharomyces cerevisiae XP that grows faster than commonly used research and industrial S. cerevisiae strains. The genomic, transcriptomic, and metabolomic analyses suggest that the fast growth rate...

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) play a pivotal role in fundamental biological processes and disease development. GPCR isoforms, derived from alternative splicing, can exhibit distinct signaling patterns. Some highly-truncated isoforms can impact functional performance of full-length receptors, suggesting their intriguing regulatory roles. Howev...

Synechococcus, a type of ancient photosynthetic cyanobacteria, is crucial in modern carbon-negative synthetic biology due to its potential for producing bioenergy and high-value products. With its high biomass, fast growth rate, and established genetic manipulation tools, Synechococcus has become a research focus in recent years. Abundant germplasm...

Chemokine receptors play crucial roles in fundamental biological processes. Their malfunction may result in many diseases, including cancer, autoimmune diseases, and HIV. The oligomerization of chemokine receptors holds significant functional implications that directly affect their signaling patterns and pharmacological responses. However, the olig...

Therapeutic monoclonal antibodies are the most rapidly growing class of molecular medicine, and they are beneficial to the treatment of a broad spectrum of human diseases. However, the aggregation of antibodies during the process of manufacture, distribution, and storage poses significant challenges, potentially compromising efficacy and inducing a...

Membrane proteins are critical mediators for tumor progression and present enormous therapeutic potentials. Although gene profiling can identify their cancer-specific signatures, systematic correlations between protein functions and tumor-related mechanisms are still unclear. We present here the CrMP-Sol database (https://bio-gateway.aigene.org.cn/...

Synthetic biology, relying on Design-Build-Test-Learn (DBTL) cycle, aims to solve medicine, manufacturing, and agriculture problems. However, the DBTL cycle’s Learn (L) step lacks predictive power for the behavior of biological systems, resulting from the incompatibility between sparse testing data and chaotic metabolic networks. Herein, we develop...

Optically pure lactic acid is an important precursor for the synthesis of biodegradable plastic polylactic acid. Geobacillus thermoglucosidasius is a thermophilic bacterial chassis with industrial potential. In this study, we reprogrammed this chassis to efficiently produce polymer-grade lactic acid by combining rational and semi-rational design st...

l-Alanine is an important amino acid widely used in food, medicine, materials, and other fields. Here, we develop Bacillus licheniformis as an efficient l-alanine microbial cell factory capable of realizing high-temperature fermentation. By enhancing the glycolytic pathway, knocking out the by-product pathways and overexpressing the thermostable al...

The rising demand for the three-carbon diol 1,3-propanediol (1,3-PDO) in various industries, including food, lubricants, drugs, and new polyester polymer materials, has spurred notable interest in development of environmentally sustainable...

Rationally controlling cellular metabolism is of great importance but challenging owing to its highly complex and chaotic nature. Natural existing sensory proteins like histidine kinases (HKs) are understood as “sensitive nodes” of biological networks that can trigger disruptive metabolic reprogramming (MRP) upon perceiving environmental fluctuatio...

The host-guest incompatibility between a production host and non-native enzymes has posed an arduous challenge for synthetic biology, particularly between mesophile-derived enzymes and a thermophilic chassis. In the present study, we develop a thermophilic enzyme mining strategy comprising an automated co-evolution-based screening pipeline (http://...

Solute carrier transporters are integral membrane proteins, and are important for diverse cellular nutrient transports, metabolism, energy demand, and other vital biological activities. They have recently been implicated in pancreatic cancer and other cancer metastasis, angiogenesis, programmed cell death and proliferation, cell metabolism and chem...

Global warming and climate instability have spurred interest in using renewable carbon resources for the sustainable production of chemicals. Cyanobacteria are ideal cellular factories for carbon-negative production of chemicals owing to their great potentials for directly utilizing light and CO2 as sole energy and carbon sources, respectively. How...

The misuse of petroleum-based plastics has resulted in serious environmental pollution and resource wastage. Biodegradable plastics can be used as green substitutes for traditional plastics. Here, we discuss the feasibility and technical bottlenecks in developing a microbial cell factory for the production of biodegradable plastics from lignocellul...

Reliable methods are always greatly desired for the practice of food inspection. Currently, most food inspection techniques are mainly dependent on the identification of special components, which neglect the combination effects of different components and often lead to biased results. By using Chinese liquors as an example, we developed a new food...

Solute carrier transporters are integral membrane proteins, and are important for diverse cellular nutrient transports, metabolism, energy demand, and other vital biological activities. They have recently been implicated in pancreatic cancer and other cancer metastasis, angiogenesis, programmed cell death and proliferation, cell metabolism and chem...

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Membrane transporters including glucose transporters (GLUTs) are involved in cellular energy supplies, cell metabolism and other vital biological activities. They have also been implicated in cancer proliferation and metastasis, thus they represent an important target in combatting cancer. However, membrane transporters are very difficult to study...

Metabolic reprogramming (MRP) is a fundamental approach in synthetic biology that involves redirecting metabolic flux and remodeling metabolic networks. However, only few approaches have been made in effective metabolic operations, especially at global level of metabolic networks. Naturally existing cellular perception apparatuses (CPAs), such as h...

Water-soluble expression and purification are of considerable importance for protein identification and characterization. However, there has been a lack of an effective method for water-soluble expression of membrane proteins, which has severely hampered their studies.

3, 4‐Dihydroxyphenyl‐l‐alanine (l‐DOPA) is a compound of high medical value and is considered effective as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease. Currently, bioproduction of l‐DOPA is mainly carried out by whole‐cell catalysis mediated by recombinant Escherichia coli carrying heterogeneous tyrosine phenol lyase. Vibrio natriegens is increasingly attr...

Plastic pollution caused by non-biodegradable plastics is one of the most widely discussed and notable challenges of the 21st century. Developing biodegradable plastics, such as polylactic acid (PLA), is broadly...

Correction for ‘Direct carbon capture for the production of high-performance biodegradable plastics by cyanobacterial cell factories’ by Chunlin Tan et al. , Green Chem. , 2022, https://doi.org/10.1039/d1gc04188f.

Endowing mesophilic microorganisms with high-temperature resistance is highly desirable for industrial microbial fermentation. Here, we report a cold-shock protein (CspL) that is an RNA chaperone protein from a lactate producing thermophile strain ( Bacillus coagulans 2–6), which is able to recombinantly confer strong high-temperature resistance to...

Accurate predictions of 3-dimensional protein structures by AlphaFold2 is a game-changer for biology, especially for structural biology. Here we present the studies of several native chemokine receptors including CCR5, CCR9, CXCR2 and CXCR4 determined by X-ray crystallography, and their water-soluble QTY counter parts predicted by AlphaFold2. In th...

In microbial research, the heterogeneity phenomenon is closely associated with microbial physiology in multiple dimensions. For now, A few studies were proposed in transcriptome and proteome analysis to discover the heterogeneity among single cells. However, microbial single cell metabolomics has not been possible yet. Herein, we developed a method...

Plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing environmental issues today, leading to an urgent need to develop biodegradable plastics1-3. Polylactic acid (PLA) is one of the most promising biodegradable materials because of its potential applications in disposable packaging, agriculture, medicine, and printing filaments for 3D printers4-6....

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and dioxin‐like compounds, including sulfur, nitrogen and oxygen heterocycles, are widespread and toxic environmental pollutants. A wide variety of microorganisms capable of growing with aromatic polycyclic compounds are essential for bioremediation of the contaminated sites and the Earth's carbon cycle. Here...

Cyanobacteria is one of the promising microbial chassis in synthetic biology, which serves as a typical host for light-driven production. With the gradual depletion of fossil resources and intensification of global warming, the research on cyanobacterial cell factory using CO2 as carbon resource is ushering in a new wave. For a long time, research...

Shubat (fermented camel milk beverage) and Ayran (yogurt) are popular traditional fermented milk products in Kazakhstan. However, the natural microbial diversity in these fermented dairy products is not well studied. In this study, we paired high-throughput sequencing with the traditional culture-dependent method to evaluate the bacterial diversity...

Coexistence of multiple homologous resistance-nodulation-division (RND) efflux pumps in bacteria is frequently described with overlapping substrate profiles. However, it is unclear how bacteria balance their transcription in response to changing environment. Here, we characterized a repressor, SrpR, in Pseudomonas putida B6-2 (DSM 28064), whose cod...

It was posited that functionalities of GPCRs require full-length sequences that are negated by residue deletions. Here we report that significantly truncated nfCCR5QTY and nfCXCR4QTY still bind native ligands. Receptor-ligand interactions were discovered from yeast 2-hybrid screening and confirmed by mating selection. Two nfCCR5QTY (SZ218a, SZ190b)...

Application of degradable plastics is the most critical solution to plastic pollution. As the precursor of biodegradable plastic PLA (polylactic acid), efficient production of l‐lactic acid is vital for the commercial replacement of traditional plastics. Bacillus coagulans H‐2, a robust strain, was investigated for effective production of l‐lactic...

Microalgae are recognized as promising feedstocks for biofuel production and have been intensively studied. However, a systematic investigation of the relationship between cellular components and fuel properties in microalgae is currently absent. This review introduces recent advances in microalgal torrefaction and critically evaluates the properti...

Currently, the inspection and supervision of animal ingredients relies primarily upon specific amplification-dependent methods, whose efficiency and accuracy are being seriously challenged by the increasing diversity and complexity of meat products. High-throughput sequencing (HTS) technology was employed to develop an alternative method to detect...

Vibrio is a recognized fast-growing bacterial genus, which is considered to be attractive for the development of next-generation biotechnological workhorses. Here, three Vibrio strains FA1, FA2, and FA3, capable of growing rapidly in cost-effective media, are isolated and systematically evaluated. Genome sequencing and comparative genomic analyses...

High temperatures deleteriously affect cells by damaging cellular structures and changing the behavior of diverse biomolecules, and extensive research about thermophilic microorganisms has elucidated some of the mechanisms that can overcome these effects and allow thriving in high-temperature ecological niches. We here used functional genomics meth...

Membrane proteins, especially the α-helical ones such as G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), are considered extremely important owing to their significant biological roles. However, their expression and purification pose difficulties because of their poor solubility in water, which seriously impedes research progress in this field. Recently, QTY m...

We report the entire process underlying the NicR2 regulatory mechanism from association between free NicR2 and two promoters to dissociation of the NicR2-promoter complex. NicR2 can bind to another promoter, Pspm , which controls expression of nicotine-degrading genes that are not controlled by the Phsp promoter. We identified specific nucleotides...

The PLA‐derived materials possess great potential of commercialization. A soil‐derived bacterium was isolated for effi cient production of optically pure d‐lactate, a crucial monomer for high‐performance PLA. This will be a promotion for replacing petroleum‐based plastics with bio‐based polymers which can be easily mineralized by soil microbes. Thi...

l-Lactic acid is an important monomer of polylactic acid, a biodegradable plastic. In this study, we systematically investigated l-lactic acid fermentation by thermophilic Bacillus coagulans strains using the corncob residue (CCR), a widely available lignocellulosic material. Our results showed that 68.0 g/L l-lactic acid was obtained with a high y...

Optically pure d‐lactate production has received much attention for its critical role in high‐performance polylactic acid production. However, the current technology can hardly meet the comprehensive demand of industrialization on final titer, productivity, optical purity, and raw material costs. Here, an efficient d‐lactate producer strain, Sporol...

Photosynthetic chain remodeling promotes the direct conversion of CO2 into valuable aromatic compounds. In their Communication (DOI: 10.1002/anie.201808402), P. Xu and co‐workers show how redirecting the carbon flux toward the shikimate pathway enables 2‐phenylethanol, an aromatic alcohol with a rose‐like odor, to be produced from CO2 and solar ene...

Neumodellierung der Photosynthesekette fördert die direkte Umwandlung von CO2 in wertvolle aromatische Verbindungen. P. Xu et al. zeigen in ihrer Zuschrift (DOI: 10.1002/ange.201808402), wie die Umlenkung des Kohlenstoff‐Flusses in den Shikimisäure‐Pfad die Produktion von 2‐Phenylethanol – einem aromatischen Alkohol mit rosenähnlichem Duft – aus CO...

Value-added utilization of lignin waste streams is vital to fully sus-tainable and economically viable biorefinery. However, deriving substantial value from its main constituents is seriously hindered by the constant requirement for expensive coenzymes. Herein, we devised a coenzyme-free biocatalyst that can transform lignin hy-drolytic aromatics i...

Directing CO2 conversion using photosynthetic microorganisms offers a promising route to couple CO2 sequestration with petrochemical replacement. However, the low‐flux shikimate pathway for synthesis of valuable aromatics remains largely unexploited. In addition, it is unclear how an enhanced low‐flux pathway would influence the photosynthetic chai...

Directing CO2 conversion using photosynthetic microorganisms offers a promising route to couple CO2 sequestration with petrochemical replacement. However, the low‐flux shikimate pathway for synthesis of valuable aromatics remains largely unexploited. In addition, it is unclear how an enhanced low‐flux pathway would influence the photosynthetic chai...

Synthetic biology emerges as a powerful approach for unlocking the potential of cyanobacteria to produce various chemicals. However, the highly oxidative intracellular environment of cyanobacteria is incompatible to numerous introduced enzymes from anaerobes. In this study, we explore a strategy based on natural compartmentalization of cyanobacteri...

Significance The QTY (glutamine, threonine, and tyrosine) code-designed detergent-free chemokine receptors may be useful in many applications. The QTY variants may be useful not only as reagents in deorphanization studies but also for designing biologics to treat cancer and autoimmune or infectious diseases. The QTY code allows membrane proteins to...

Recent years have witnessed a rising demand for bioproduced chemicals owing to restricted availability of petrochemical resources and increasing environmental concerns. Extensive efforts have been invested in the metabolic engineering of microorganisms for biosynthesis of chemicals and fuels. Among these, direct conversion of CO2 to chemicals by ph...

Indigenous microbial communities are main and promising performers for bioremediation due to their excellent adaptability, degradation capability, and inherent plasticity. Treating heavy oil-produced water (HOPW) is a challenge owing to the high recalcitrance and heterogeneity of chemicals it contains. A full-scale HOPW treatment plant was built at...

Glutarate is a five carbon platform chemical produced during the catabolism of L-lysine. It is known that it can be catabolized through the glutaryl-CoA dehydrogenation pathway. Here, we discover that Pseudomonas putida KT2440 has an additional glutarate catabolic pathway involving L-2-hydroxyglutarate (L-2-HG), an abnormal metabolite produced from...

1,4-Butanediol (BDO) biosynthesis from renewable resources is of increasing interest because of global energy and environmental problems. We have previously demonstrated the production of BDO from erythritol by whole-cell catalysis. Here, the effects of several variables on BDO production were investigated, including cell density, temperature, subs...

Temperaturgesteuerte Biokatalyse ermöglicht die nachhaltige Erzeugung aromatischer Aldehyde oder Alkohole, wie von F. Tao, P. Xu et al. in ihrer Zuschrift (DOI: 10.1002/ange.201710793) beschrieben. Die Farben der Ahornblätter stehen für die unterschiedlichen Reaktionstemperaturen, die bestimmen, welche Art von Produkt gebildet wird. Auf diese Weise...

Temperature-directed biocatalysis was developed for the sustainable production of aromatic aldehydes or alcohols as described by F. Tao, P. Xu, and co-workers in their Communication (DOI: 10.1002/anie.201710793). The colors of the maple leaves represent the different reaction temperatures, which can determine the type of product formed. With this s...

Microbial bioremediation is a promising approach for the removal of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) contaminants. Many degraders of PAHs possess efflux pump genes in their genomes; however, their specific roles in the degradation of PAHs have not been clearly elucidated. In this study, two efflux pumps, TtgABC and SrpABC, were systematically...

Biosynthesis of aromatic aldehydes/alcohols from renewable resources is currently receiving considerable attention because of increased demand, finite fossil resources and growing environmental concerns. Here, temperature-routed whole-cell catalysis was developed using two novel enzymes from a thermophilic actinomycete. Ferulic acid, a model lignin...

Biosynthesis of aromatic aldehydes/alcohols from renewable resources is currently receiving considerable attention because of increased demand, finite fossil resources and growing environmental concerns. Here, temperature-routed whole-cell catalysis was developed using two novel enzymes from a thermophilic actinomycete. Ferulic acid, a model lignin...

Primordial enzymes are proposed to possess broad specificities. Through divergence and evolution, enzymes have been refined to exhibit specificity towards one reaction or substrate, and are thus commonly assumed as "specialists". However, several enzymes are "generalists" that catalyze a range of substrates and reactions. This property has been def...

Significance d -3-Phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase (SerA) is a key enzyme in l -serine biosynthesis. It couples the dehydrogenation of d -3-phosphoglycerate to 3-phosphohydroxypyruvate and the reduction of 2-ketoglutarate to d -2-hydroxyglutarate ( d -2-HG). This provides an example of how nonenergetically favorable and energetically favorable reacti...

Metabolic engineering has emerged as a powerful tool for bioproduction of both fine and bulk chemicals. The natural coordination among different metabolic pathways contributes to the complexity of metabolic modification, which hampers the development of biorefineries. Herein, the coordination between the oxidative and reductive branches of glycerol...

1,3-Propanediol (1,3-PD), a valuable bulk industrial material, has attracted increasing interest in recent years. A novel strain GYL isolated from soil samples could efficiently convert glycerol to 1,3-PD anaerobically. The physiological and biochemical characteristics of strain GYL were determined, indicating that strain GYL is a member of Clostri...

The physiological roles of silent genes are still unsolved puzzles and their application potentials are unexplored. Herein, a silent glycerol catabolism pathway encoded by glp system was activated in a Klebsiella pneumoniae mutant, of which the acetoin degradation pathway was blocked. Surprisingly, the activation produced significant effects on cel...

Halomonas sp. Y2 is a halotolerant alkaliphilic strain from Na+-rich pulp mill wastewater with high alkalinity (pH >11.0). Transcriptome analysis of this isolate revealed this strain may use various transport systems for pH homeostasis. Especially, the genes encoding four putative Na+/H+ antiporters were differentially expressed upon acidic or alka...

Intrauterine infection is one of the most frequent causes of miscarriage. CpG oligodeoxynucleotide (CpG ODN) can mimic intrauterine infection. CpG ODN-induced embryo-resorption was observed consistently in the NK-cell deficient non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice but not in the wild-type (WT) mice. To elucidate the molecular mechanisms of differential pr...

The cover picture shows a “trapping” effect caused by introducing a unique d-lactate dehydrogenase into cellular metabolic networks. A “trapping point” is created by cooperation between an engineered high-flux pathway, created by gene mining and using robust enzyme(s) from abundant genomic resources, and an irreversible step, such as introducing an...

High production of polymer-grade D-lactic acid is urgently required, particularly for the synthesis of polylactic acid. High-temperature fermentation has multiple advantages, such as the reductions in equipment requirements and energy consumption, which are essential for lowering operating costs. We hunted and introduced a unique D-lactate dehydrog...

Many plant natural products have remarkable pharmacological activities. They are mainly produced directly by extraction from higher plants, which can hardly keep up with the surging global demand. Furthermore, the over-felling of many medicinal plants has undesirable effects on the ecological balance. In this study, we constructed a photoautotrophi...

Anaerobic fermentation using lignocellulosic hydrolysates as co-substrates is an economically attractive method to enhance 1,3-propanediol (1,3-PD) production by increasing the conversion yield from glycerol. Lignocellulosic hydrolysates contain the mixed sugars that are primarily glucose, xylose, and arabinose. Therefore, these three individual su...

Plant secondary metabolites have been attracting people's attention for centuries, due to their potentials; however, their production is still difficult and costly. The rich diversity of microbes and microbial genome sequence data provide unprecedented gene resources that enable to develop efficient artificial pathways in microorganisms. Here, by m...

It is increasingly attractive to engineer cyanobacteria for bulk production of chemicals from CO2. However, cofactor bias of cyanobacteria is different from bacteria that prefer NADH, which hampers cyanobacterial strain engineering. In this study, the key enzyme d-lactate dehydrogenase (LdhD) from Lactobacillus bulgaricus ATCC11842 was engineered t...

Luzhoulaojiao liquor is a type of Chinese liquor that dates back hundreds of years, but whose precise chemical composition remains unknown. This paper describes the screening of the liquor and the identification of its compounds using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography/time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC × GC/TOF-MS). Samples were pr...

Platform chemicals can be readily converted into various value-added chemicals and fuels. Photosynthetic production of platform chemicals directly from CO2 by cyanobacteria, in the presence of sunlight, holds promise for addressing global energy and environmental concerns. Herein, we report the photosynthetic production of C3 platform chemicals by...