Engineering Escherichia coli coculture systems for the production of biochemical products

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2015 Jul 7;112(27):8266-71. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1506781112. Epub 2015 Jun 25.

Abstract

Engineering microbial consortia to express complex biosynthetic pathways efficiently for the production of valuable compounds is a promising approach for metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. Here, we report the design, optimization, and scale-up of an Escherichia coli-E. coli coculture that successfully overcomes fundamental microbial production limitations, such as high-level intermediate secretion and low-efficiency sugar mixture utilization. For the production of the important chemical cis,cis-muconic acid, we show that the coculture approach achieves a production yield of 0.35 g/g from a glucose/xylose mixture, which is significantly higher than reported in previous reports. By efficiently producing another compound, 4-hydroxybenzoic acid, we also demonstrate that the approach is generally applicable for biosynthesis of other important industrial products.

Keywords: 4-hydroxybenzoic acid; metabolic engineering; microbial coculture; muconic acid.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Bacteriological Techniques / methods
  • Base Sequence
  • Biosynthetic Pathways / genetics
  • Escherichia coli / genetics
  • Escherichia coli / metabolism*
  • Escherichia coli Proteins / genetics
  • Escherichia coli Proteins / metabolism
  • Glucose / metabolism
  • Industrial Microbiology / methods
  • Metabolic Engineering / methods*
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Parabens / metabolism
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sorbic Acid / analogs & derivatives*
  • Sorbic Acid / metabolism
  • Synthetic Biology / methods*
  • Xylose / metabolism

Substances

  • Escherichia coli Proteins
  • Parabens
  • muconic acid
  • Xylose
  • Glucose
  • 4-hydroxybenzoic acid
  • Sorbic Acid