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An engineered non-oxidative glycolysis pathway for acetone production in Escherichia coli

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Abstract

Objectives

To find new metabolic engineering strategies to improve the yield of acetone in Escherichia coli.

Results

Results of flux balance analysis from a modified Escherichia coli genome-scale metabolic network suggested that the introduction of a non-oxidative glycolysis (NOG) pathway would improve the theoretical acetone yield from 1 to 1.5 mol acetone/mol glucose. By inserting the fxpk gene encoding phosphoketolase from Bifidobacterium adolescentis into the genome, we constructed a NOG pathway in E.coli. The resulting strain produced 47 mM acetone from glucose under aerobic conditions in shake-flasks. The yield of acetone was improved from 0.38 to 0.47 mol acetone/mol glucose which is a significant over the parent strain.

Conclusions

Guided by computational analysis of metabolic networks, we introduced a NOG pathway into E. coli and increased the yield of acetone, which demonstrates the importance of modeling analysis for the novel metabolic engineering strategies.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Key Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (Nos. 2012CB725203, 2015CB755704) and the Key Project in the Tianjin Science & Technology Pillar Program (No. 14ZCZDSY00060).

Supporting Information

Supplementary Table 1—Strains and plasmids used in this study.

Supplementary Table 2—Primer sequence used in this study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaoyan Yang, Qianqian Yuan, Tao Chen & Xueming Zhao

  2. Key Laboratory of Systems Microbial Biotechnology, Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 32 West 7th Avenue, Tianjin Airport Economic Area, Tianjin, 300308, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaoyan Yang, Qianqian Yuan, Yangyang Zheng & Hongwu Ma

Authors
  1. Xiaoyan Yang
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  2. Qianqian Yuan
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  3. Yangyang Zheng
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  4. Hongwu Ma
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  5. Tao Chen
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  6. Xueming Zhao
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hongwu Ma.

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Yang, X., Yuan, Q., Zheng, Y. et al. An engineered non-oxidative glycolysis pathway for acetone production in Escherichia coli . Biotechnol Lett 38, 1359–1365 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-016-2115-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-016-2115-2

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