Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology

The Korean Society for Microbiology and Biotechnology (한국미생물·생명공학회)
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Metabolic Engineering of Escherichia coli for Production of Polyhydroxyalkanoates with Hydroxyvaleric Acid Derived from Levulinic Acid

  • Kim, Doyun (Department of Biomedical Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST)) ;
  • Lee, Sung Kuk (Department of Biomedical Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST))
  • Received : 2021.08.16
  • Accepted : 2021.10.12
  • Published : 2022.01.28
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Abstract

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are emerging as alternatives to plastics by replacing fossil fuels with renewable raw substrates. Herein, we present the construction of engineered Escherichia coli strains to produce short-chain-length PHAs (scl-PHAs), including the monomers 4-hydroxyvalerate (4HV) and 3-hydroxyvalerate (3HV) produced from levulinic acid (LA). First, an E. coli strain expressing genes (lvaEDABC) from the LA metabolic pathway of Pseudomonas putida KT2440 was constructed to generate 4HV-CoA and 3HV-CoA. Second, both PhaAB enzymes from Cupriavidus necator H16 were expressed to supply 3-hydroxybutyrate (3HB)-CoA from acetyl-CoA. Finally, PHA synthase (PhaCCv) from Chromobacterium violaceum was introduced for the subsequent polymerization of these three monomers. The resulting E. coli strains produced four PHAs (w/w% of dry cell weight): 9.1 wt% P(4HV), 1.7 wt% P(3HV-co-4HV), 24.2 wt% P(3HB-co-4HV), and 35.6 wt% P(3HB-co-3HV-co-4HV).

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This work has supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MIST) (2020R1A4A1018332) and granted by innovative science project in 2020 of The circle foundation

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