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Construction of an l-serine producing Escherichia coli via metabolic engineering

  • Metabolic Engineering and Synthetic Biology
  • Published:
Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology

Abstract

l-Serine is a nonessential amino acid, but plays a crucial role as a building block for cell growth. Currently, l-serine production is mainly dependent on enzymatic or cellular conversion. In this study, we constructed a recombinant Escherichia coli that can fermentatively produce l-serine from glucose. To accumulate l-serine, sdaA encoding the l-serine dehydratase, iclR encoding the isocitrate lyase regulator, and arcA encoding the aerobic respiration control protein were deleted in turn. In batch fermentation, the engineered E. coli strain YF-5 exhibited obvious l-serine accumulation but poor cell growth. To restore cell growth, aceB encoding the malate synthase was knocked out, and the engineered strain was then transformed with plasmid that overexpressed serA FR, serB, and serC genes. The resulting strain YF-7 produced 4.5 g/L l-serine in batch cultivation and 8.34 g/L l-serine in fed-batch cultivation.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by a Grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31370085), a Grant from National High-Tech Research and Development Plan of China (2012AA022104).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Microbial Technology, Shandong University, Jinan, 250100, People’s Republic of China

    Pengfei Gu, Fan Yang, Tianyuan Su, Fangfang Li, Yikui Li & Qingsheng Qi

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  1. Pengfei Gu
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  2. Fan Yang
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  3. Tianyuan Su
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  4. Fangfang Li
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  5. Yikui Li
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  6. Qingsheng Qi
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Correspondence to Qingsheng Qi.

Additional information

P. Gu and F. Yang contributed equally to this work.

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Gu, P., Yang, F., Su, T. et al. Construction of an l-serine producing Escherichia coli via metabolic engineering. J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol 41, 1443–1450 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-014-1476-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-014-1476-6

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