Metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli W3110 strain by incorporating genome-level modifications and synthetic plasmid modules to enhance L-Dopa production from glycerol

Abstract

L-Tyrosine which is one of the terminal metabolites of highly regulated aromatic amino-acid biosynthesis pathway in Escherichia coli is a precursor for synthesis of L-Dopa. In this study, we report over production of L-Dopa by enhancing expression of rate limiting isoenzyme of shikimate kinase (aroL), chorismate synthase (aroC), aromatic-amino-acid aminotransferase (tyrB) and 3-phosphoshikimate 1-carboxyvinyltransferase (aroA) form a plasmid module harboring five enzymes under two inducible promoters converting shikimate to tyrosine. 4-hydroxyphenylacetate-3-hydrolase (hpaBC) which converts L-Tyrosine to L-Dopa was expressed constitutively from a separate plasmid module. Feedback deregulated expression of 3-Deoxy-D-arabinoheptulosonate-7-phosphate (DAHP) synthase (aroG*) replacing wild type aroG under its natural promoter led to enhancement of L-Dopa production. Deletion of transcriptional repressor tyrR and links to other competing pathways improved titers of L-Dopa. We focused on having a balanced flux by constitutive expression of pathway enzymes from plasmid constructs rather than achieving higher amounts of catalytic protein by induction. We observed glycerol when used as a carbon source for the final strain led to low acid production. The best performing strain led to decoupling of acid production and product formation in bioreactor. Fed batch analysis of the final strain led to 12.5 g/L of L-Dopa produced in bioreactor.

Keywords:

• Genome
• L-Dopa
• metabolic engineering
• pathway
• plasmid modules

Acknowledgments

The authors are highly grateful to Prof. Jay D. Keasling who is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley for kindly providing us the pY3 and pS4 plasmids with their constructs which were used in this study.

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge DBT Builder Project, JNU funded by Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India for providing instrumentation and facilities.