In E. coli, glyA encodes for serine hydroxymethyltransferase (SHMT), which converts L-serine to glycine. When engineering L-serine-producing strains, it is therefore favorable to inactivate glyA to prevent L-serine degradation. However, most glyA knockout strains exhibit slow cell growth because of the resulting lack of glycine and C1 units. To overcome this problem, we overexpressed the gcvTHP genes of the glycine cleavage system (GCV), to increase the C1 supply before glyA was knocked out. Subsequently, the kbl and tdh genes were overexpressed to provide additional glycine via the L-threonine degradation pathway, thus restoring normal cell growth independent of glycine addition. Finally, the plasmid pPK10 was introduced to overexpress pgk, serAΔ197, serC and serB, and the resulting strain E4G2 (pPK10) accumulated 266.3 mg/L of L-serine in a semi-defined medium without adding glycine, which was 3.18-fold higher than the production achieved by the control strain E3 (pPK10). This strategy can accordingly be applied to disrupt the L-serine degradation pathway in industrial production strains without causing negative side-effects, ultimately making L-serine production more efficient.

To construct an Escherichia coli strain capable of producing riboflavin with high titer and yield.A low copy number plasmid pLS01 containing a riboflavin operon under the control of a constitutive promoter was constructed and introduced into Escherichia coli MG1655. Subsequently, the pfkA, edd and ead genes were disrupted, and the resulting strain LS02T produced 667 mg riboflavin/l in MSY medium supplied with 10 g glucose/l in flask cultivation. In a fed-batch process, riboflavin production of the strain reached 10.4 g/l with a yield of 56.8 mg riboflavin/g glucose.To our knowledge, this is the first report of engineered E. coli strains that can produce more than 10 g riboflavin/l in fed-batch cultivation, indicating that E. coli has potential for riboflavin production.

A dual route for anaerobic succinate production was engineered into Corynebacterium glutamicum. The glyoxylate pathway was reconstructed by overexpressing isocitrate lyase, malate synthase and citrate synthase. The engineered strain produced succinate with a yield of 1.34 mol (mol glucose)−1. Further overexpression of succinate exporter, SucE, increased succinate yield to 1.43 mol (mol glucose)−1. Metabolic flux analysis revealed that the glyoxylate pathway was further activated by engineering succinate export system. Using an anaerobic fed-batch fermentation process, the final strain produced 926 mM succinate (= 109 g l−1) with an overall volumetric productivity of 9.4 mM h−1 and an average yield of 1.32 mol (mol glucose)−1.

Engineering complex biological systems typically requires combinatorial optimization to achieve the desired functionality. Here, we present Multiplex Iterative Plasmid Engineering (MIPE), which is a highly efficient and customized method for combinatorial diversification of plasmid sequences. MIPE exploits ssDNA mediated λ Red recombineering for the introduction of mutations, allowing it to target several sites simultaneously and generate libraries of up to 107 sequences in one reaction. We also describe “restriction digestion mediated co-selection (RD CoS)”, which enables MIPE to produce enhanced recombineering efficiencies with greatly simplified coselection procedures. To demonstrate this approach, we applied MIPE to fine-tune gene expression level in the 5-gene riboflavin biosynthetic pathway and successfully isolated a clone with 2.67-fold improved production in less than a week. We further demonstrated the ability of MIPE for highly multiplexed diversification of protein coding sequence by simultaneously targeting 23 codons scattered along the 750 bp sequence. We anticipate this method to benefit the optimization of diverse biological systems in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering.Keywords: combinatorial optimization; metabolic engineering; plasmid library; protein directed evolution; ssDNA recombineering; synthetic biology;

Bacillus subtilis is a Gram-positive sporiferous bacterium widely used in a variety of industrial fields as a producer of high-quality vitamins, enzymes and proteins. Many genetic modifications and evolutionary engineering optimisations aiming at obtaining a better performing strain for its products have been studied. As genome-scale metabolic network models have gained significant popularity as effective tools in metabolic phenotype studies, we reconstructed a genome-scale metabolic network of B. subtilis – iBsu1147. The accuracy of iBsu1147 is validated by growth on various carbon sources, single gene knockout and large fragment non-essential gene knockout simulations. The model is used for the in silico metabolic engineering design of reactions over/underexpressed or knockout for increasing the production of four important products of B. subtilis: riboflavin, cellulase Egl-237, (R,R)-2,3-butanediol and isobutanol. The simulation predicted candidate reactions related to the improvement of strain performance on related products. The prediction is partly supported by previously published results. Due to the complexity of the biological system, it is difficult to manually find the factors that are not directly related to the production of the target compounds. The in silico predictions provide more choices for further strain improvement for these products.

α-Ketoglutarate is accumulated as the main byproduct during the aerobic succinate production from glycerol by Escherichia coli BL21(DE3) in minimal medium. To address this issue, here a strategy of directed pathway evolution was developed to enhance the alternative succinate production route—the glyoxylate shunt. Via the directed pathway evolution, the glyoxylate shunt was recruited as the primary anaplerotic pathway in a ppc mutant, which restored its viability in glycerol minimal medium. Subsequently, the operon sdhCDAB was deleted and the gene ppc was reverted in the evolved strain for succinate production. The resulting strain E2-Δsdh-ppc produced 30 % more succinate and 46 % less α-ketoglutarate than the control strain. A G583T mutation in gene icdA, which significantly decreased the activity of isocitrate dehydrogenase, was identified in the evolved strain as the main mutation responsible for the observed phenotype. Overexpression of α-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase complex in E2-Δsdh-ppc further reduced the amount of byproduct and improved succinate production. The final strain E2-Δsdh-ppc-sucAB produced 366 mM succinate from 1.3 M glycerol in minimal medium in fed-batch fermentation. The maximum and average succinate volumetric productivities were 19.2 and 6.55 mM h−1, respectively, exhibiting potential industrial production capacity from the low-priced substrate.

Acetoin is widely used in food and other industries. A bdhA and acoA double-knockout strain of Bacillus subtilis produced acetoin at 0.72 mol/mol, a 16.4 % increased compared to the wild type. Subsequent overexpression of the alsSD operon enhanced the acetolactate synthase activity by 52 and 66 % in growth and stationary phases, respectively. However, deletion of pta gene caused little increase of acetoin production. For acetoin production by the final engineered strain, BSUW06, acetoin productivity was improved from 0.087 g/l h, using M9 medium plus 30 g glucose/l under micro-aerobic conditions, to 0.273 g/h l using LB medium plus 50 g glucose/l under aerobic conditions. In fermentor culture, BSUW06 produced acetoin up to 20 g/l.

•AraE overexpression in Bacillus subtilis alleviated the xylose transport bottleneck.•The introduction of xylA and xylB from Escherichia coli conferred B. subtilis carbon catabolite derepression.•Glucose and xylose were assimilated simultaneously by B. subtilis to produce acetoin efficiently in minimal medium.As a vital flavor compound, acetoin is extensively used in dairy products and drinks industry. In this study, Bacillus subtilis was engineered to metabolize glucose and xylose as substrates for acetoin production. Initially, gene araE from B. subtilis, encoding the xylose transport protein AraE, was placed under the control of the constitutive promoter P43 for over-expression. Batch cultures showed that 10 g/L xylose was depleted completely in 32 h. Subsequently, genes xylA and xylB from Escherichia coli, encoding xylose isomerase and xylulokinase respectively, were introduced into B. subtilis, and the recombinant turned out to assimilate glucose and xylose without preference. In shake-flask fermentations, 5.5 g/L acetoin with a yield of 0.70 mol (mol sugar)−1 was obtained by the optimum strain BSUL13 under microaerobic conditions, which offered a metabolic engineering strategy on engineering microbe as cell factory for the production of high-valued chemicals from renewable resource.

•First reported work on cell free production of 5-aminolevulinic acid from succinate and glycine.•Thermostable 5-aminolevulinic acid synthase was used in the cell free process and polyphosphate was used for ATP regeneration to reduce the production cost.•Fed-batch addition of succinate to avoid its inhibition on succinyl-CoA synthase.5-Aminolevulinic acid (ALA) is the precursor for the biosynthesis of tetrapyrroles and has broad agricultural and medical applications. Currently ALA is mainly produced by chemical synthesis and microbial fermentation. Cell free multi-enzyme catalysis is a promising method for producing high value chemicals. Here we reported our work on developing a cell free process for ALA production using thermostable enzymes. Cheap substrates (succinate and glycine) were used for ALA synthesis by two enzymes: 5-aminolevulinic acid synthase (ALAS) from Laceyella sacchari (LS-ALAS) and succinyl-CoA synthase (Suc) from Escherichia coli. ATP was regenerated by polyphosphate kinase (Ppk) using polyphosphate as the substrate. Succinate was added into the reaction system in a fed-batch mode to avoid its inhibition effect on Suc. After reaction for 160 min, ALA concentration was increased to 5.4 mM. This is the first reported work on developing the cell free process for ALA production. Through further process and enzyme optimization the cell free process could be an effective and economic way for ALA production.

•Inactivation of cytochrome bd-II oxidase or/and NDH-II dehydrogenase increased poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) production.•The poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) production reached 6.16 g/L with a yield of 0.32 g (g glucose)−1 which reached 66.67% of the maximum theoretical.•The poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) production reached 28.23 g/L in a 5-L fermentor study.In order to redirect more carbon flux from TCA cycle into poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) biosynthesis pathway via increasing respiratory efficiency, appB and ndh genes encoding cytochrome bd-II oxidase and NDH-II dehydrogenase were inactivated in Escherichia coli JM109/pBHR68. All appB or/and ndh knockout strains exhibited significantly increased PHB accumulation accompanying with increased NAD(P)H/NAD(P)+ ratio and intracellular acetyl-CoA pool. Among them, the Δndh strain could accumulate up to 6.16 g/L PHB from 20 g/L glucose and 3.5 g/L PHB from 20 g/L xylose, respectively, a 1.76-fold and 3.43-fold increase compared to the wild-type control. The PHB production of this strain reached 28.23 g/L in a 5-L fermentor study, which was 2.70-fold as much as that of the wild-type control. These results indicated that inactivating the cytochrome bd-II oxidase or/and NDH-II dehydrogenase of the aerobic respiratory chain is a simple and effective strategy to improve PHB biosynthesis in E. coli. To date, this is the first time to improve PHB production by inactivation of cytochrome bd-II oxidase or/and NDH-II dehydrogenase in low efficient respiratory chains.