, 2005; Raman et al., 2009). This turnover

and release of cellulosomes during fermentation may be necessary to allow for the creation of new cellulosomes with modified composition. It has also been suggested that the controlled release of cellulosomes during growth may function as a mechanism to release C. thermocellum from its substrate, leaving deployed cellulosomes to continue hydrolyzing cellulose (Bayer & Lamed, 1986). Although extensive work has been performed analyzing the composition of purified cellulosomes, the composition of the cellulosome in its native microbial context is not well understood. There is an increasing interest in building artificial cellulosomes, which is currently limited by a lack of understanding of structural elements in native cellulosomes click here (Krauss et al., 2012). In order to increase understanding of the cellulosome in its native microbial context, we undertook work to develop a fluorescent probe for labeling type II cohesins based on the commercially available SNAP-tag labeling system (Keppler et al., 2003). The SNAP-tag system was developed by Keppler

et al. as a method of covalently labeling fusion proteins in vivo. SNAP-tag is a mutant of the O6-alkylguanine-DNA alkyl transferase human DNA repair protein which has increased activity against its substrate O6-benzylguanine. The mutated protein binds covalently with benzylguanine-derived AZD3965 fluorophores. To create the probe, we fused a type II dockerin with the commercially available SNAP-tag. We then used this probe to visualize localization of type II cohesin modules in the cellulosome for both wild type and mutants of the cipA scaffolding protein (Supporting Information, Fig. S1). Clostridium thermocellum DSM 1313 (WT) was grown in modified DSM 122 broth (Olson et al.,

2010) with the addition of 50 mM 3-(N-morpholino) propanesulfonic acid (MOPS) sodium salt and 3 g L−1 trisodium citrate (Na3-C6H5O7*2H2O). All manipulations of C. thermocellum were carried out inside an anaerobic chamber (Coy Laboratory Products Inc.) with an atmosphere of 85% nitrogen, acetylcholine 10% carbon dioxide, 5% hydrogen, and < 5 parts per million oxygen. Clostridium thermocellum was grown at 55 °C using 5 g L−1 cellobiose as the primary carbon source. The genotype of strains used in this work is listed in Table 1. Strain construction was performed as described previously (Argyros et al., 2011; Guss et al., 2012; Olson & Lynd, 2012) using plasmids listed in Table 2. Briefly, the regions annotated as ‘5′ flank’ and ‘3′ flank’ are present on both the plasmid and the chromosome. By a series of recombination events, the region flanked by the ‘5′ flank’ and ‘3′ flank’ on the chromosome is replaced by the corresponding region from the plasmid. Plasmid sequences are available from Genbank (accession number in Table 2).