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Efficient production of lycopene by engineered E. coli strains harboring different types of plasmids

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Abstract

The lycopene biosynthetic genes crtE, crtB, and crtI from Deinococcus wulumuqiensis R12 were integrated into three different vector backbones—pET28a, pTrc99A, and pUC18—and the resulting recombinant plasmids pET28a-EBI, pTrc99A-EBI, and pUC18-EBI were introduced into different Escherichia coli hosts. The results showed that lycopene production of strain 28BL was lower than that of 99 series strains without IPTG in LB medium. In addition, lycopene production of 99JM with supplementation of 20% (w/v) glycerol was 1.6-fold higher than with supplementation of 6% (w/v) glucose. After optimization of the host strain and culture medium, the yield of microbial lycopene was increased successfully. When recombinant E. coli 99DH was cultivated under exposure to light in 2YT + Gly medium, the highest lycopene production rate was 26.2 mg/L/h at 30 h, and the maximum specific lycopene content was 67 mg/g dry cell (925 mg/L) at 40 h, which represents a 76% increase over the starting point.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Joint Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (U1603112), the National Natural Science Foundation of China for Young Scholars (21406111), and the Program for Innovative Research Team in Universities of Jiangsu Province (2015).

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Author notes

  1. Jiali Xu and Xian Xu contributed to the work equally and should be regarded as co-first authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Materials-Oriented Chemical Engineering, College of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China

    Jiali Xu & He Huang

  2. School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China

    Xian Xu, Qing Xu & He Huang

  3. Institute of Microbiology, Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Urumqi, 830091, Xinjiang Uigur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China

    Zhidong Zhang

  4. College of Food Science and Light Industry, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China

    Ling Jiang

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  1. Jiali Xu
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  2. Xian Xu
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  3. Qing Xu
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  4. Zhidong Zhang
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  5. Ling Jiang
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Correspondence to Ling Jiang or He Huang.

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This study does not contain any experiments involving human subjects or experimental animals.

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Xu, J., Xu, X., Xu, Q. et al. Efficient production of lycopene by engineered E. coli strains harboring different types of plasmids. Bioprocess Biosyst Eng 41, 489–499 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-017-1883-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-017-1883-y

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