Towards one sample per second for mass spectrometric screening of engineered microbial strains

Area of Science:

• Synthetic biology and metabolic engineering.
• Analytical chemistry and mass spectrometry.
• Biotechnology and bioprocessing.

Background:

• Microbial cell factories are crucial for converting renewable resources into valuable chemicals and materials.
• Predictive modeling for microbial strain engineering is underdeveloped, necessitating high-throughput screening.
• Mass spectrometry (MS) offers sensitive, label-free analysis with high chemical specificity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review recent advancements in rapid mass spectrometry (MS) assays for microbial screening.
• To highlight the application of these rapid MS assays in screening microbial libraries.
• To discuss challenges and future directions in MS-based microbial strain library screening.

Main Methods:

• Review of recent developments in high-throughput mass spectrometry (MS) techniques.
• Integration of massively parallel cultivation and robotic sample preparation.
• Utilization of chromatography-free instrumentation for accelerated MS analysis.

Main Results:

• Rapid MS assays have achieved or approached screening rates of one microbial sample per second.
• These advancements significantly improve the throughput of analyzing complex microbial samples.
• Demonstrated effectiveness of MS in label-free screening of microbial libraries.

Conclusions:

• Rapid MS assays are revolutionizing microbial strain engineering by enabling faster screening.
• Key challenges in MS screening of strain libraries include data complexity and standardization.
• Future solutions will likely involve further automation, advanced data analysis, and novel MS instrumentation.