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Construction of a highly efficient Bacillus subtilis 168 whole-cell biocatalyst and its application in the production of l-ornithine

  • Biocatalysis
  • Published:
Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology

Abstract

l-Ornithine, a non-protein amino acid, is usually extracted from hydrolyzed protein as well as produced by microbial fermentation. Here, we focus on a highly efficient whole-cell biocatalyst for the production of l-ornithine. The gene argI, encoding arginase, which catalyzes the hydrolysis of l-arginine to l-ornithine and urea, was cloned from Bacillus amyloliquefaciens B10-127 and expressed in GRAS strain Bacillus subtilis 168. The recombinant strain exhibited an arginase activity of 21.9 U/mg, which is 26.7 times that of wild B. subtilis 168. The optimal pH and temperature of the purified recombinant arginase were 10.0 and 40 °C, respectively. In addition, the recombinant arginase exhibited a strong Mn2+ preference. When using whole-cell biocatalyst-based bioconversion, a hyper l-ornithine production of 356.9 g/L was achieved with a fed-batch strategy in a 5-L reactor within 12 h. This whole-cell bioconversion study demonstrates an environmentally friendly strategy for l-ornithine production in industry.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the High-tech Research and Development Programs of China (2015AA021004), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31300028), the Research Project of Chinese Ministry of Education (113033A), the Jiangsu Provincial National Basic Research Program (BK20130137), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (JUSRP51306A), the Project Funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, the 111 Project (No. 111-2-06) and the Jiangsu province “Collaborative Innovation Center for Advanced Industrial Fermentation” industry development program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Key Laboratory of Industrial Biotechnology of Ministry of Education, School of Biotechnology, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, 214122, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China

    Meizhou Wang, Meijuan Xu, Zhiming Rao, Taowei Yang & Xian Zhang

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  1. Meizhou Wang
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  2. Meijuan Xu
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  3. Zhiming Rao
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Correspondence to Zhiming Rao.

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Wang, M., Xu, M., Rao, Z. et al. Construction of a highly efficient Bacillus subtilis 168 whole-cell biocatalyst and its application in the production of l-ornithine. J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol 42, 1427–1437 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-015-1672-z

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