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Metabolic engineering of Rhodopseudomonas palustris for squalene production

  • Short Communication
  • Published:
Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology

Abstract

Squalene is a strong antioxidant used extensively in the food, cosmetic and medicine industries. Rhodopseudomonas palustris TIE-1 was used as the host because of its ability to grow photosynthetically using solar energy and carbon dioxide from atmosphere. The deletion of the shc gene resulted in a squalene production of 3.8 mg/g DCW, which was 27-times higher than that in the wild type strain. For constructing a substrate channel to elevate the conversion efficiency, we tried to fuse crtE gene with hpnD gene. By fusing the two genes, squalene content was increased to 12.6 mg/g DCW, which was 27.4 % higher than that resulted from the co-expression method. At last, the titer of squalene reached 15.8 mg/g DCW by co-expressing the dxs gene, corresponding to 112-fold increase relative to that for wild-type strain. This study provided novel strategies for improving squalene yield and demonstrated the potential of producing squalene by Rhodopseudomonas palustris.

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Acknowledgments

Rhodopseudomonas palustris TIE-1 was kindly provided by Dianne K. Newman, Ph.D. (Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge). The plasmid pMG103 was kindly provided by Masayuki Inui, Ph.D. (Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth, Japan).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pathogen Biology, School of Basic Medical Science, Xi’an Medical University, Xi’an, 710021, Shaanxi, China

    Wen Xu, Changbin Chai, Lingqiao Shao, Jia Yao & Yang Wang

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  1. Wen Xu
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  2. Changbin Chai
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  3. Lingqiao Shao
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  5. Yang Wang
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Correspondence to Yang Wang.

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Xu, W., Chai, C., Shao, L. et al. Metabolic engineering of Rhodopseudomonas palustris for squalene production. J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol 43, 719–725 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-016-1745-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-016-1745-7

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