Biotechnology Letters

, Volume 35, Issue 2, pp 245–251 | Cite as

Enhancement of cytidine production by coexpression of gnd, zwf, and prs genes in recombinant Escherichia coli CYT15

Original Research Paper
First Online:
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Abstract

Cytidine is a precursor of several antiviral drugs. The pentose phosphate pathway (PPP) is primarily responsible for NADPH and 5-phospho-α-d-ribose 1-diphosphate as an important precursor of cytidine biosynthesis in Escherichia coli. To enhance cytidine production, we obtained the recombinant E. coli CYT15-gnd-prs-zwf that co-expressed the prs, zwf, and gnd genes encoding phosphoribosylpyrophosphate synthetase, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase and 6-phosphogluconate dehydrogenase (three key enzymes in PPP) respectively. In fermentation experiments, strain CYT15-gnd-prs-zwf produced 735 mg cytidine/l using glucose as substrate, which was approx. 128 % higher than the cytidine production by the parental strain (CYT15). Co-expression of zwf, gnd, and prs decreased growth (3.2 %) slightly and increased glucose uptake (72 %). This is the first study to report increased cytidine production by increasing metabolic flux through the PPP in E. coli.

Keywords

Cytidine production Co-expression Escherichia coli Metabolic flux Phosphoribosylpyrophosphate synthetase 6-Phosphoglucose dehydrogenase 6-Phosphogluconate dehydrogenase 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

We thank our colleagues for critical reading of the manuscript and providing valuable suggestions. This work was supported by the Research Program of Tianjin University of Science and Technology (No. 20100211) and by Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (No. IRT1166).

Supplementary material

10529_2012_1068_MOESM1_ESM.docx (30 kb)
Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 28 kb)

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Metabolic Engineering Laboratory, College of BiotechnologyTianjin University of Science & TechnologyTianjinChina
  2. 2.College of AgricultureNingxia UniversityYinchuanChina

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