Highly efficient production of L-valine by multiplex metabolic engineering of Corynebacterium glutamicum / 生物工程学报

As a branched chain amino acid, L-valine is widely used in the medicine and feed sectors. In this study, a microbial cell factory for efficient production of L-valine was constructed by combining various metabolic engineering strategies. First, precursor supply for L-valine biosynthesis was enhanced by strengthening the glycolysis pathway and weakening the metabolic pathway of by-products. Subsequently, the key enzyme in the L-valine synthesis pathway, acetylhydroxylate synthase, was engineered by site-directed mutation to relieve the feedback inhibition of the engineered strain. Moreover, promoter engineering was used to optimize the gene expression level of key enzymes in L-valine biosynthetic pathway. Furthermore, cofactor engineering was adopted to change the cofactor preference of acetohydroxyacid isomeroreductase and branched-chain amino acid aminotransferase from NADPH to NADH. The engineered strain C. glutamicum K020 showed a significant increase in L-valine titer, yield and productivity in 5 L fed-batch bioreactor, up to 110 g/L, 0.51 g/g and 2.29 g/(L‧h), respectively.

Construction of Escherichia coli cell factories / 生物工程学报

As an important model industrial microorganism, Escherichia coli has been widely used in pharmaceutical, chemical industry and agriculture. In the past 30 years, a variety of new strategies and techniques, including artificial intelligence, gene editing, metabolic pathway assembly, and dynamic regulation have been used to design, construct, and optimize E. coli cell factories, which remarkably improved the efficiency for biotechnological production of chemicals. In this review, three key aspects for constructing E. coli cell factories, including pathway design, pathway assembly and regulation, and optimization of global cellular performance, are summarized. The technologies that have played important roles in metabolic engineering of E. coli, as well as their future applications, are discussed.

Optimization of heparosan synthetic pathway in Bacillus subtilis 168 / 生物工程学报

Heparosan is the start point for chemoenzymatic synthesis of heparin and it is of great significance to efficiently synthesize heparosan in microorganisms. The effects of overexpressing key enzyme genes of the UDP-glucuronic acid (UDP-GlcUA) pathway (pgcA, gtaB and tuaD) or the UDP-N-acetyl-glucosamine (UDP-GlcNAc) pathway (glmS, glmM and glmU) on the heparosan production and molecular mass were analyzed in the constructed heparosan-producing Bacillus subtilis ((1.71±0.08) g/L). On this basis, heparosan production was increased to (2.89±0.11) g/L with the molecular mass of (75.90±1.18) kDa through co-overexpressing the tuaD, gtaB, glmU, glmM and glmS genes in shake flask cultivation. In the 3 L fed-batch fermentation, heparosan production was improved to (7.25±0.36) g/L with the molecular mass of (46.66±2.71) kDa, providing the potential for heparosan industrial production.