FAST and splitFAST to the fore at CLOSTRIDIUM XVI

Sep 19, 2022 | Anaerobe labeling, FAST and splitFAST, The Twinkle Factory

FAST and splitFAST of The Twinkle Factory brought to the fore at CLOSTRIDIUM XVI.

Following two postponements, the international conference CLOSTRIDIUM XVI finally happened at Toulouse (France) hosted by Prof. P. Soucaille of INSA.  Hence, this gathering allowed the acetogenic and solventogenic Clostridia community to share their most exciting findings since CLOSTRIDIUM XV in 2018 in München (Germany).

One hot topic of the conference was FAST of The Twinkle Factory as the new standard for protein fluorescence-labeling in anaerobic conditions.  It was indeed cited by Prof. T. Papoutsakis of Delaware, an early adopter and relentless promoter of FAST in Clostridium.  Papoutsakis was indeed the first in 2019 to draw the attention to FAST’s unique feature:  no need for oxygen.  He hence uncovered FAST potential for studies involving cell sorting, sporulation dynamics, and population characterization.  Not only in pure, but also in mixed cultures such as microbiomes and syntrophic cultures.  While additionally instantaneous and reversible, FAST swiftly spread across the anaerobe community, from Delaware to Ulm (Germany) and Nottingham (UK) of course.  But also, besides Clostridia, to Wien (Austria), Minnesota, Aarhus (Denmark) or Shanghai (China).  Not to mention non-academic teams!

As a result, FAST was the main subject of three talks and one poster:

  • Dr. M. Flaiz: Novel approaches to light-up solventogenic and acetogenic Clostridia the FAST way (abstract)
  • Dr. F. Bengelsdorf: Autotrophic lactate production from H2 + CO2 using recombinant and fluorescent FAST-tagged Acetobacterium woodii strains (abstract)
  • Dr. A. Mook: Synthetic co-cultivation of A. woodii and C. drakei for production of medium-chain organic acids from H2 and CO2 (abstract)
  • Dr. R. Hocq: Towards a fluorescent reporter system for Thermoanaerobacter kivui (poster)

And, finally, Luc Lenglet of The Twinkle Factory gave a general presentation of FAST and applications in anaerobes. Expedite metabolic engineering of anaerobes with FAST of The Twinkle Factory (abstract – slides).

As a result, fair to conclude that FAST is growing into a standard tool in microbial synthetic biology.  It will help expedite strain engineering towards bio-based biofuels, ethanol, PDO, butanol, BDO, acetone, organic acids, PLA, etc

Far more to come soon.  Stay tuned!