Metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli for high-level production of the biodegradable polyester monomer 2-pyrone-4,6-dicarboxylic acid

Fengli Wu; Shucai Wang; Dan Zhou; Shukai Gao; Guotian Song; Yanxia Liang; Qinhong Wang

doi:10.1016/j.ymben.2024.03.003

Metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli for high-level production of the biodegradable polyester monomer 2-pyrone-4,6-dicarboxylic acid

Metab Eng. 2024 Mar 21:83:52-60. doi: 10.1016/j.ymben.2024.03.003. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Fengli Wu¹, Shucai Wang², Dan Zhou³, Shukai Gao⁴, Guotian Song⁴, Yanxia Liang⁴, Qinhong Wang⁵

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Engineering Biology for Low-carbon Manufacturing, Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tianjin, 300308, China; National Center of Technology Innovation for Synthetic Biology, Tianjin, 300308, China. Electronic address: wu_fl@tib.cas.cn.
² Key Laboratory of Engineering Biology for Low-carbon Manufacturing, Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tianjin, 300308, China; National Center of Technology Innovation for Synthetic Biology, Tianjin, 300308, China; College of Biotechnology, Tianjin University of Science & Technology, Tianjin, 300457, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Engineering Biology for Low-carbon Manufacturing, Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tianjin, 300308, China; National Center of Technology Innovation for Synthetic Biology, Tianjin, 300308, China; College of Bioengineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400030, China.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Engineering Biology for Low-carbon Manufacturing, Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tianjin, 300308, China; National Center of Technology Innovation for Synthetic Biology, Tianjin, 300308, China.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Engineering Biology for Low-carbon Manufacturing, Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tianjin, 300308, China; National Center of Technology Innovation for Synthetic Biology, Tianjin, 300308, China. Electronic address: wang_qh@tib.cas.cn.

PMID: 38521489
DOI: 10.1016/j.ymben.2024.03.003

Abstract

2-Pyrone-4,6-dicarboxylic acid (PDC), a chemically stable pseudo-aromatic dicarboxylic acid, is a promising building block compound for manufacturing biodegradable polyesters. This study aimed to construct high-performance cell factories enabling the efficient production of PDC from glucose. Firstly, the effective enzymes of the PDC biosynthetic pathway were overexpressed on the chromosome of the 3-dehydroshikimate overproducing strain. Consequently, the one-step biosynthesis of PDC from glucose was achieved. Further, the PDC production was enhanced by multi-copy integration of the key gene PsligC encoding 4-carboxy-2-hydroxymuconate-6-semialdehyde dehydrogenase and co-expression of Vitreoscilla hemoglobin. Subsequently, the PDC production was substantially improved by redistributing the metabolic flux for cell growth and PDC biosynthesis based on dynamically downregulating the expression of pyruvate kinase. The resultant strain PDC50 produced 129.37 g/L PDC from glucose within 78 h under fed-batch fermentation conditions, with a yield of 0.528 mol/mol and an average productivity of 1.65 g/L/h. The findings of this study lay the foundation for the potential industrial production of PDC.

Keywords: Aromatic chemicals; Biodegradable plastics; Dicarboxylic acid; Dynamic control; Shikimate pathway.