%0 Journal Article %A Sargent, Frank %A Davidson, Fordyce A. %A Kelly, Ciarán L. %A Binny, Rachelle %A Christodoulides, Natasha %A Gibson, David %A Johansson, Emelie %A Kozyrska, Katarzyna %A Lado, Lucia Licandro %A MacCallum, Jane %A Montague, Rachel %A Ortmann, Brian %A Owen, Richard %A Coulthurst, Sarah J. %A Dupuy, Lionel %A Prescott, Alan R. %A Palmer, Tracy %T A synthetic system for expression of components of a bacterial microcompartment %D 2013 %J Microbiology, %V 159 %N Pt_11 %P 2427-2436 %@ 1465-2080 %R https://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.069922-0 %I Microbiology Society, %X In general, prokaryotes are considered to be single-celled organisms that lack internal membrane-bound organelles. However, many bacteria produce proteinaceous microcompartments that serve a similar purpose, i.e. to concentrate specific enzymic reactions together or to shield the wider cytoplasm from toxic metabolic intermediates. In this paper, a synthetic operon encoding the key structural components of a microcompartment was designed based on the genes for the Salmonella propanediol utilization (Pdu) microcompartment. The genes chosen included pduA, -B, -J, -K, -N, -T and -U, and each was shown to produce protein in an Escherichia coli chassis. In parallel, a set of compatible vectors designed to express non-native cargo proteins was also designed and tested. Engineered hexa-His tags allowed isolation of the components of the microcompartments together with co-expressed, untagged, cargo proteins. Finally, an in vivo protease accessibility assay suggested that a PduD–GFP fusion could be protected from proteolysis when co-expressed with the synthetic microcompartment operon. This work gives encouragement that it may be possible to harness the genes encoding a non-native microcompartment for future biotechnological applications. %U https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.069922-0