Biology subjects

Penttila, M.

Publications and source records attributed to Penttila, M..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

New-to-nature PHA synthase design using deep learning

Polyhydroxyalkanaoate (PHA) synthases are a group of complex, dimeric enzymes which catalyse polymerization of Rhydroxyacids into PHAs. PHA properties depend on their monomer composition but enzymes found in nature have narrow specificities to certain R-hydroxyacids. In this study, a conditional variational autoencoder was used for the first time to design new-to-nature PHA synthases. The model was trained with natural protein sequences obtained from Uniprot and was used for the creation of approximately 10 000 new PHA synthase enzymes. Out of these, 16 sequences were selected for in vivo validation. The selection criteria included the presence of conserved residues such as catalytic amino acids and amino acids in the dimer interface and structural features like the number of -helixes in the N-terminal part of the enzyme. Two of the new-to-nature PHA synthases that had substantial numbers of amino acid substitutions (87 and 98) with respect to the most similar native enzymes were confirmed active and produced poly(hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) when expressed in yeast S. cerevisiae. PHA including PHB have high potential as biodegradable and biocompatible materials. Ultimately the model-designed new-to-nature PHA synthases, could expand the PHA material properties to suit new application areas.

bioengineering↗

bioRxiv2022

Strain design optimization using reinforcement learning

Engineered microbial cells present a sustainable alternative to fossil-based synthesis of chemicals and fuels. Cellular synthesis routes are readily assembled and introduced into microbial strains using state-of-the-art synthetic biology tools. However, the optimization of the strains required to reach industrially feasible production levels is far less efficient. It typically relies on trial-and-error leading into high uncertainty in total duration and cost. New techniques that can cope with the complexity and limited mechanistic knowledge of the cellular regulation are called for guiding the strain optimization. In this paper, we put forward a multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) approach that learns from experiments to tune the metabolic enzyme levels so that the production is improved. Our method is model-free and does not assume prior knowledge of the microbes metabolic network or its regulation. The multi-agent approach is well-suited to make use of parallel experiments such as multi-well plates commonly used for screening microbial strains. We demonstrate the methods capabilities using the genome-scale kinetic model of Escherichia coli, k-ecoli457, as a surrogate for an in vivo cell behaviour in cultivation experiments. We investigate the methods performance relevant for practical applicability in strain engineering i.e. the speed of convergence towards the optimum response, noise tolerance, and the statistical stability of the solutions found. We further evaluate the proposed MARL approach in improving L-tryptophan production by yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, using publicly available experimental data on the performance of a combinatorial strain library. Overall, our results show that multi-agent reinforcement learning is a promising approach for guiding the strain optimization beyond mechanistic knowledge, with the goal of faster and more reliably obtaining industrially attractive production levels. Author summaryEngineered microbial cells offer a sustainable alternative solution to chemical production from fossil resources. However, to make the chemical production using microbial cells economically feasible, they need to be substantially optimized. Due to the biological complexity, this optimization to reach sufficiently high production is typically a costly trial and error process. This paper presents an Artificial Intelligence (AI) approach to guide this task. Our tool learns a model from previous experiments and uses the model to suggest improvements to the engineering design, until a satisfactory production performance is reached. This paper evaluates the behaviour of the proposed AI method from several angles, including the amount of experiments needed, the tolerance to noise as well as the stability of the proposed designs.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2019

Analysis of Finnish blue mussel (Mytilus edulis L.) shell: Biomineral ultrastructure, organic-rich interfacial matrix and mechanical behavior

Studying various marine biomineralized ultrastructures reveals the appearance of common architectural designs and building blocks in materials with fascinating mechanical properties that match perfectly to their biological tasks. Advanced mechanical properties of biological materials are attributed to evolutionary optimized molecular architectures and structural hierarchy. One example which has not yet been structurally investigated in great detail is the shell of Mytilus edulis L. (Finnish blue mussel) found in the archipelago of SW-Finland. Through a combination of various state-of-the-art techniques such as high-resolution electron microscopy imaging, Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy, powder X-ray diffraction, synchrotron wide-angle X-ray diffraction, nanoindentation and protein analysis, both the inorganic mineralized components as well as the organic-rich matrix were extensively characterized. We found very similar ultra-architecture across the shell of M. edulis L. as compared to the widely studied and closely related M. edulis. However, we also found interesting differences, for instance in the thickness and degree of orientation of the mineralized layers indicating dissimilar properties and related alterations in the biomineralization processes. Our results show that the shell of M. edulis L. has a gradient of mechanical properties, with the increase in the stiffness and the hardness from anterior to the posterior region of the shell. The shell is made from distinct and recognizable mineralized layers each varying in thickness and microstructural features. At posterior regions of the shell, moving from dorsal to ventral side, these layers are an oblique prismatic layer, a prismatic layer and a nacreous layer, in which the oblique prismatic layer is found to be the main and thickest mineralized layer of the shell. Probing the calcified rods in the oblique prismatic layer using high resolution SEM imaging revealed opening of channels with a diameters of 40-50 nm and lengths up to a micrometer extending through the rods. The chitin and protein have been found to be the main component of the organic-rich interfacial matrix as expected. Protein analysis showed two abundant proteins with sizes around 100 kD and 45 kD which likely not only regulates biomineralization and adhesion of the crystals but also governing the intrinsic-extrinsic toughening in the shell. Overall, this detailed analysis provides new structural insights into biomineralization of marine shells in general.

developmental biology↗