Whole-cell biocatalysis with Myxococcus xanthus

Biocatalysis has become an attractive complement to conventional chemical catalysis in the field of organic synthesis. This trend is due to the excellent chemo-, regio- and stereoselectivity of biocatalysis, which typically avoids the formation of unwanted by-products as well as cross-reactivity between reactants. Since the use of isolated enzymes and their cofactors can be associated with high costs, there is a continued interest in whole-cell biocatalysts. Applications range from the production of chiral building blocks to the derivatization of natural products and the generation of new drug candidates for the pharmaceutical and fine chemical industries. The bacterium Myxococcus xanthus is an emerging cell factory, especially for the production of antibiotics and other bioactive natural products. Not only possesses M. xanthus a considerable tolerance toward xenobiotics, but it is also a metabolically versatile host providing important building blocks for natural product biosynthesis. In this chapter, we describe procedures for the whole-cell biocatalysis with M. xanthus. This also involves methods for the construction of expression plasmids and their transfer into M. xanthus.