Deinove

At the start of 2008, the international public collection of deinococci contained only 45 strains, 8 of which were capable of growing at temperatures above 45°C (thermophilic bacteria, as distinct from mesophilic bacteria which die at that temperature). Since then, only a few more strains have been added to the collection. Most of the 700 scientific articles published to date on the Deinococcus genus concern the mesophilic species Deinococcus radiodurans; only twenty or so only cover the other species within the genus. No patents involving deinococci (other than those filed by Deinove) have been published in the field of biofuels and antibiotics. It is clear that this bacterial genus has hardly been explored for purposes other than fundamental scientific research. The work performed by Deinove and its academic partners has shown that it is possible to isolate and optimize these as yet unexploited micro-organisms and has revealed the rich variety of the deinococci's current and potential metabolic functions.

Deinove has already achieved the following milestones:

• creation of an ever-growing library of over 3000 strains with a wide variety of metabolic properties.
• selection of a unique collection of thermophilic deinococci capable of growing at over 45°C.
• the identification of many metabolic functions of interest.
• the implementation of metabolic, genetic and fermentation engineering tools with a view to optimizing the strains' industrial performance levels.
• broad, international patent applications for protecting these inventions.

Why screen for deinococci in hostile environments and exploit the bacteria industrially?

The deinococci arose several billion years ago - not so long after the birth of the Earth and well before animals and humankind appeared. The fact that this ancestral life form has survived extreme geological and climatic variations (notably desiccation and extreme temperatures) clearly explains its present robustness; the deinococci are the living organisms which best resistant ionizing radiation and other physical and chemical stresses. This is directly a very valuable property for industrial applications. The deinococci's robustness enables them to survive at low densities in hostile biotopes (hot springs, totally dry, hot environments, etc.) where no other micro-organisms can compete. It is nevertheless important to note that despite this exceptional resistance, deinococci can be cleaned out of industrial installations by using simple procedures (autoclaving or acid/alkali washing). Furthermore, the deinococci are not pathogenic in animals or humans.

The deinococci's robustness is due in part to their unique ability to reassemble their genome after the latter has been shattered into thousands of fragments by otherwise fatal doses of ionizing radiation or prolonged desiccation. The Deinococcus literally "comes back to life"! This ability to reassemble the shattered genome (the mechanisms of which were elucidated by Professor Miroslav Radman, Dr Ivan Matic and colleagues (Nature 2006:443(7111):569-573)) gives rise directly to another key property of the deinococci. Long ago, in order to adapt themselves to stressful conditions, these bacteria developed the ability to assimilate exogenous genetic elements from other bacteria and even more complex living organisms. These successive assimilations have constituted a stable genetic mosaic which today confers the deinococci with extraordinary genetic and functional diversity. Deinove has proved this concept by sequencing and annotating (relative to international gene databases) the genome of many different deinococci strains, in collaboration with Professor Jean-Michel Claverie's CNRS research group in Marseilles. This biodiversity is of major industrial value and enables Deinove to select the properties of the optimized deinococci for the company's target industrial applications.

In contrast to conventional biotechnological approaches which seek to introduce new genes into fragile, simple bacteria (like Escherichia coli) via genetic engineering, Deinove is exploiting the natural biodiversity generated over several billion year and which has enabled the deinococci to achieve robustness, stability and functional agility. This biodiversity facilitates the use of self-cloning between different deinococci in order to combine complementary metabolic properties without creating genetically modified organisms.