Adaptive laboratory evolution and metabolic engineering of Cupriavidus necator for improved catabolism of volatile fatty acids

In this study, adaptive laboratory evolution was performed to improve growth of Cupriavidus necator H16 on various volatile fatty acid substrates. Whole-genome sequencing was conducted on evolved strains to identify mutations that arose during evolution. Clean genomic mutations of two genomic targets identified from genomic data were generated and RNA sequencing was performed to elucidate genes that were differentially regulated in the mutant strains.