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Fermentative production of branched chain amino acids: a focus on metabolic engineering

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Abstract

The branched chain amino acids (BCAAs), l-valine, l-leucine, and l-isoleucine, have recently been attracting much attention as their potential to be applied in various fields, including animal feed additive, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals, increased. Strategies for developing microbial strains efficiently producing BCAAs are now in transition toward systems metabolic engineering from random mutagenesis. The metabolism and regulatory circuits of BCAA biosynthesis need to be thoroughly understood for designing system-wide metabolic engineering strategies. Here we review the current knowledge on BCAAs including their biosynthetic pathways, regulations, and export and transport systems. Recent advances in the development of BCAA production strains are also reviewed with a particular focus on l-valine production strain. At the end, the general strategies for developing BCAA overproducers by systems metabolic engineering are suggested.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Korea–Australia Collaborative Research Project on the Development of Sucrose-Based Bioprocess Platform (N02071165) from the Korean Ministry of Knowledge Economy and by the Korean Systems Biology Program (No. M10309020000-03B5002-00000) from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST). Further supports by LG Chem Chair Professorship, Microsoft, World Class University Program of MEST, and IBM-SUR program are greatly appreciated.

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  1. BioProcess Engineering Research Center, KAIST, Daejeon, 305-701, Republic of Korea

    Jin Hwan Park & Sang Yup Lee

  2. Center for Systems and Synthetic Biotechnology, KAIST, Daejeon, 305-701, Republic of Korea

    Jin Hwan Park & Sang Yup Lee

  3. Institute for the BioCentury, KAIST, Daejeon, 305-701, Republic of Korea

    Jin Hwan Park & Sang Yup Lee

  4. Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, KAIST, Daejeon, 305-701, Republic of Korea

    Sang Yup Lee

  5. Bioinformatics Research Center, KAIST, Daejeon, 305-701, Republic of Korea

    Sang Yup Lee

  6. Department of Biological Sciences, KAIST, Daejeon, 305-701, Republic of Korea

    Sang Yup Lee

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  1. Jin Hwan Park
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Park, J.H., Lee, S.Y. Fermentative production of branched chain amino acids: a focus on metabolic engineering. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 85, 491–506 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-009-2307-y

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