Co‐culture engineering for microbial biosynthesis of 3‐amino‐benzoic acid in Escherichia coli. Issue 7 (17th June 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zhang, Haoran; Stephanopoulos, Gregory
• Is Part Of: Biotechnology journal. Volume 11:Issue 7(2016)
• Page Start: 981
• Page End: 987
• Publication Date: 2016-06-17
• Subjects: 3‐amino‐benzoic ac -- Co‐culture engineering -- E. coli -- Heterologous biosynthesis -- Metabolic engineering; Biotechnology -- Periodicals; 660.605
• DOI: 10.1002/biot.201600013
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1860-6768

Abstract

Abstract: 3‐amino‐benzoic acid (3AB) is an important building block molecule for production of a wide range of important compounds such as natural products with various biological activities. In the present study, we established a microbial biosynthetic system for de novo 3AB production from the simple substrate glucose. First, the active 3AB biosynthetic pathway was reconstituted in the bacterium Escherichia coli, which resulted in the production of 1.5 mg/L 3AB. In an effort to improve the production, an E. coli ‐ E. coli co‐culture system was engineered to modularize the biosynthetic pathway between an upstream strain and an downstream strain. Specifically, the upstream biosynthetic module was contained in a fixed E. coli strain, whereas a series of E. coli strains were engineered to accommodate the downstream biosynthetic module and screened for optimal production performance. The best co‐culture system was found to improve 3AB production by 15 fold, compared to the mono‐culture approach. Further engineering of the co‐culture system resulted in biosynthesis of 48 mg/L 3AB. Our results demonstrate co‐culture engineering can be a powerful new approach in the broad field of metabolic engineering. Abstract : This study aims to establish a novel biosynthetic system for production of important molecule 3‐amino‐benzoic acid from the simple substrate glucose. The biosynthetic pathway was accommodated in a microbial co‐culture composed of two E. coli strains responsible for the upstream and downstream pathway modules, respectively. This approach allowed for rapid identification of the best combination of the constituent E. coli strains and resulted in the production of 48 mg/L 3‐amino‐benzoic acid.