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Engineering Escherichia coli for efficient coproduction of polyhydroxyalkanoates and 5-aminolevulinic acid

  • Metabolic Engineering and Synthetic Biology - Original Paper
  • Published:
Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology

Abstract

Single-cell biorefineries are an interesting strategy for using different components of feedstock to produce multiple high-value biochemicals. In this study, a strategy was applied to refine glucose and fatty acid to produce 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) and polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs). To express the ALA and PHAs dual-production system efficiently and stably, multiple copies of the poly-β-3-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) synthesis operon were integrated into the chromosome of Escherichia coli DH5αΔpoxB. The above strain harboring the ALA C5 synthesis pathway genes hemA and hemL resulted in coproduction of 38.2% PHB (cell dry weight, CDW) and 3.2 g/L extracellular ALA. To explore coproduction of ALA and poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV), the PHBV synthetic pathway was also integrated into engineered E. coli and coexpressed with hemA and hemL; cells produced 38.9% PHBV (CDW) with 10.3 mol% 3HV fractions and 3.0 g/L ALA. The coproduction of ALA with PHB and PHBV can improve the utilization of carbon sources and maximize the value derived from the feedstock.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31670047 and 31370085).

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Author notes

  1. Xue Zhang and Jian Zhang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Glycoengineering Research Center, State Key Laboratory of Microbial Technology, Shandong University, **an, 250100, People’s Republic of China

    Xue Zhang, Jian Zhang, Jiasheng Xu, Qian Zhao, Qian Wang & Qingsheng Qi

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  1. Xue Zhang
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Correspondence to Qian Wang.

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Zhang, X., Zhang, J., Xu, J. et al. Engineering Escherichia coli for efficient coproduction of polyhydroxyalkanoates and 5-aminolevulinic acid. J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol 45, 43–51 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-017-1990-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-017-1990-4

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