Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology

, Volume 99, Issue 4, pp 1795–1804 | Cite as

Biosynthesis of butenoic acid through fatty acid biosynthesis pathway in Escherichia coli

  • Xiping Liu
  • Haiying Yu
  • Xu Jiang
  • Guomin Ai
  • Bo Yu
  • Kun Zhu
Applied genetics and molecular biotechnology
First Online:
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:

Abstract

Butenoic acid is a C4 short-chain unsaturated fatty acid mainly used in the preparation of resins, pharmaceuticals, and fine chemicals. However, butenoic acid derived from petroleum is costly and unfriendly to the environment. Here, we report a novel biosynthetic strategy to produce butenoic acid by utilizing the intermediate of fatty acid biosynthesis pathway in engineered Escherichia coli. A thioesterase gene (B. thetaiotaomicron thioesterase (bTE)) from Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron was heterologously expressed in E. coli to specifically convert butenoyl-acyl carrier protein (ACP), a fatty acid biosynthesis intermediate, to butenoic acid. The titer of butenoic acid ranged from 0.07 to 11.4 mg/L in four different E. coli strains with varied expressing vectors. Deletion of endogenous fadD gene (encoding acyl-CoA synthetase) to block fatty acid oxidation improved the butenoic acid production in all strains to some extent. The highest butenoic acid accumulation of 18.7 mg/L was obtained in strain XP-2 (BL21-∆fadD/pET28a-bTE). Moreover, partially inhibiting the enoyl-ACP reductase (FabI) of strain XP-2 by triclosan increased butenoic acid production by threefold, and the butenoic acid titer was further increased to 161.4 mg/L by supplying glucose and tryptone in the M9 medium. Fed-batch fermentation of this strain further enhanced butenoic acid production to 4.0 g/L within 48 h. The butenoic acid tolerance assay revealed that this strain could tolerate 15–20 g/L of butenoic acid.

Keywords

Butenoic acid Escherichia coli Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron thioesterase Fatty acid biosynthesis 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31170040, 31200081) and Chinese Academy of Sciences (KGZD-EW-606).

Supplementary material

253_2014_6233_MOESM1_ESM.pdf (253 kb)
ESM 1 (PDF 252 kb)

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  • Xiping Liu
    • 1
    • 3
  • Haiying Yu
    • 1
  • Xu Jiang
    • 1
  • Guomin Ai
    • 2
  • Bo Yu
    • 1
  • Kun Zhu
    • 1
  1. 1.CAS Key Laboratory of Microbial Physiological and Metabolic Engineering, Institute of MicrobiologyChinese Academy of SciencesBeijingChina
  2. 2.State Key Laboratory of Microbial Resources, Institute of MicrobiologyChinese Academy of SciencesBeijingChina
  3. 3.University of Chinese Academy of SciencesBeijingChina

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