Characterization and Application of the Sugar Transporter Zmo0293 from Zymomonas mobilis

Zymomonas mobilis is a natural ethanologen with many desirable characteristics, which makes it an ideal industrial microbial biocatalyst for the commercial production of desirable bioproducts. Sugar transporters are responsible for the import of substrate sugars and the conversion of ethanol and other products. Glucose-facilitated diffusion protein Glf is responsible for facilitating the diffusion of glucose uptake in Z. mobilis. However, another sugar transporter-encoded gene, ZMO0293, is poorly characterized. We employed gene deletion and heterologous expression mediated by the CRISPR/Cas method to investigate the role of ZMO0293. The results showed that deletion of the ZMO0293 gene slowed growth and reduced ethanol production and the activities of key enzymes involved in glucose metabolism in the presence of high concentrations of glucose. Moreover, ZMO0293 deletion caused different transcriptional changes in some genes of the Entner Doudoroff (ED) pathway in the ZM4-ΔZM0293 strain but not in ZM4 cells. The integrated expression of ZMO0293 restored the growth of the glucose uptake-defective strain Escherichia coli BL21(DE3)-ΔptsG. This study reveals the function of the ZMO0293 gene in Z. mobilis in response to high concentrations of glucose and provides a new biological part for synthetic biology.