Enhancing microbial metabolic capacity through high-energy electron beam-induced intense structural variations
Nature Biotechnology describes a high-energy pulsed electron beam (HEPE) approach that induces extensive structural variants in Streptomyces, activating cryptic secondary metabolite pathways and substantially increasing clavulanic acid, microcin J25 and lovastatin production with minimal cytotoxicity; authors combined HEPE with high-throughput metabolomics and deposited genomic, Hi-C, RNA-seq and metabolomics datasets.
Why it mattersHEPE-driven SVs increased clavulanic acid and lovastatin yields, prompting industrial strain development investments.