Abstract
Escherichia coli normally cannot utilize the β-glucoside sugar cellobiose as a carbon and energy source unless a stringent selection pressure for survival is present. The cellobiose-utilization phenotype can be conferred by mutations in the two cryptic operons, chb and asc. In this study, the cellobiose-utilization phenotype was conferred to E. coli by replacing the cryptic promoters of these endogenous operons with a constitutive promoter. Evolutionary adaptation of the engineered strain CP12CHBASC by repeated subculture in cellobiose-containing minimal medium led to an increase in the rate of cellobiose uptake and cell growth on cellobiose. An efficient cellobiose-metabolizing E. coli strain would be of great importance over glucose-metabolizing E. coli for a simultaneous saccharification and fermentation process, as the cost of the process would be reduced by eliminating one of the three enzymes needed to hydrolyze cellulose into simple sugars.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant funded by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (MEST) of the Korean Government (NRF-2009-C1AAA001-2009-0093479); by the Basic Science Research Program, through the NRF, funded by the MEST (NRF-2009-0076912); and by the World Class University (WCU) program, through the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation, funded by the MEST (R31-2008-000-20012-0).
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Vinuselvi, P., Lee, S.K. Engineering Escherichia coli for efficient cellobiose utilization. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 92, 125–132 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-011-3434-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-011-3434-9