High efficiency rare earth element bioleaching with systems biology guided engineering of Gluconobacter oxydans

Abstract

Biological methods are a promising route for the environmentally-friendly production of rare earth elements (REE), which are essential for sustainable energy and defense technologies. In earlier work we identified the key genetic mechanisms contributing to the REE-bioleaching capability of Gluconobacter oxydans B58. Here we have targeted two of these mechanisms to generate a high-efficiency bioleaching strain of G. oxydans. Disruption of the phosphate-specific transport system through a clean deletion of pstS constitutively turns on the phosphate starvation response, yielding a much more acidic biolixiviant, and increasing bioleaching by up to 30%. Coupling knockout of pstS with the over-expression of the mgdh membrane-bound glucose dehydrogenase gene using the P112 promoter (strain G. oxydans ΔpstS, P112:mgdh) reduces biolixiviant pH by 0.39 units; increases REE-bioleaching by 53% at a pulp density of 10% and increases it by 73% at a pulp density of 1%.