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Comparative metabolic profiling reveals the key role of amino acids metabolism in the rapamycin overproduction by Streptomyces hygroscopicus

  • Systems Biotechnology
  • Published:
Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology

Abstract

Rapamycin is an important natural macrolide antibiotic with antifungal, immunosuppressive and anticancer activity produced by Streptomyces hygroscopicus. In this study, a mutant strain obtained by ultraviolet mutagenesis displayed higher rapamycin production capacity compared to the wild-type S. hygroscopicus ATCC 29253. To gain insights into the mechanism of rapamycin overproduction, comparative metabolic profiling between the wild-type and mutant strain was performed. A total of 86 metabolites were identified by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. Pattern recognition methods, including principal component analysis, partial least squares and partial least squares discriminant analysis, were employed to determine the key biomarkers. The results showed that 22 potential biomarkers were closely associated with the increase of rapamycin production and the tremendous metabolic difference was observed between the two strains. Furthermore, metabolic pathway analysis revealed that amino acids metabolism played an important role in the synthesis of rapamycin, especially lysine, valine, tryptophan, isoleucine, glutamate, arginine and ornithine. The inadequate supply of amino acids, or namely “nitrogen starvation” occurred in the mutant strain. Subsequently, the exogenous addition of amino acids into the fermentation medium of the mutant strain confirmed the above conclusion, and rapamycin production of the mutant strain increased to 426.7 mg/L after adding lysine, approximately 5.8-fold of that in the wild-type strain. Finally, the results of real-time PCR and enzyme activity assays demonstrated that dihydrodipicolinate synthase involved with lysine metabolism played vital role in the biosynthesis of rapamycin. These findings will provide a theoretical basis for further improving production of rapamycin.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the National 973 Project of China (No. 2013CB733600), the National 863 Project of China (No. 2011AA02A206), the Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21236005), Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (No. 20110032130005) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21176181).

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Key Laboratory of Systems Bioengineering (Ministry of Education), Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People’s Republic of China

      Baohua Wang, Jiao Liu, Huanhuan Liu & Jianping Wen

    2. SynBio Research Platform, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering (Tianjin), School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People’s Republic of China

      Baohua Wang, Jiao Liu, Huanhuan Liu & Jianping Wen

    3. Key Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology and Technology, Ministry of Education, TEDA Institute of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology, Nankai University, 23 Hongda Street, TEDA, Tianjin, 300457, People’s Republic of China

      Di Huang

    4. Tianjin Key Laboratory of Microbial Functional Genomics, TEDA, Tianjin, 300457, People’s Republic of China

      Di Huang

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    1. Baohua Wang
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    Correspondence to Jianping Wen.

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    B. Wang and J. Liu have contributed equally to this work.

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    Wang, B., Liu, J., Liu, H. et al. Comparative metabolic profiling reveals the key role of amino acids metabolism in the rapamycin overproduction by Streptomyces hygroscopicus . J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol 42, 949–963 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-015-1611-z

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