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Development of probiotic E. coli Nissle 1917 for β-alanine production by using protein and metabolic engineering

  • Biotechnological Products and Process Engineering
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Abstract

β-alanine has been used in food and pharmaceutical industries. Although Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 (EcN) is generally considered safe and engineered as living therapeutics, engineering EcN for producing industrial metabolites has rarely been explored. Here, by protein and metabolic engineering, EcN was engineered for producing β-alanine from glucose. First, an aspartate-α-decarboxylase variant ADCK43Y with improved activity was identified and over-expressed in EcN, promoting the titer of β-alanine from an undetectable level to 0.46 g/L. Second, directing the metabolic flux towards L-aspartate increased the titer of β-alanine to 0.92 g/L. Third, the yield of β-alanine was elevated to 1.19 g/L by blocking conversion of phosphoenolpyruvate to pyruvate, and further increased to 2.14 g/L through optimizing culture medium. Finally, the engineered EcN produced 11.9 g/L β-alanine in fed-batch fermentation. Our work not only shows the potential of EcN as a valuable industrial platform, but also facilitates production of β-alanine via fermentation.

Key points

• Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 (EcN) was engineered as a β-alanine producing cell factory

• Identification of a decarboxylase variant ADC K43Y with improved activity

• Directing the metabolic flux to L-ASP and expressing ADC K43Y elevated the titer of β-alanine to 11.9 g/L

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Data availability

The authors declare that all the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary information files: construction of recombinant plasmids and strains; primer pairs used in this study; analyzing the expression of genes; analyzing of β-alanine production by shake-flask fermentation; the ADC genes used in the study; primer pairs used in the study. All the data generated or analyzed during this study are included in the published article.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge Prof. Juanping Qiu, Prof. Tingheng Zhu, and Prof. Jian Xu (College of Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China) for providing useful suggestions; senior technician Haichan Huang (College of Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China) for providing technical assistance.

Funding

This work was supported by the grants from the Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province (No. 2020C02031), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31670084), and the State Key Laboratory for Managing Biotic and Chemical Threats to the Quality and Safety of Agro-products (2021DG700024-KF202105).

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Author notes

  1. Shilong Hu and Mingyue Fei contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, 310014, Zhejiang, China

    Shilong Hu, Mingyue Fei, Beibei Fu, Mingjing Yu, Panhong Yuan & Dongchang Sun

  2. Institute of Quality and Standard for Agro-Products, Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou, 310021, Zhejiang, China

    Biao Tang & Hua Yang

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  1. Shilong Hu
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Contributions

S. H. designed and performed the experiments, data curation, formal analysis, and draft manuscript preparation; M. F. designed the experiments, analyzed the data, and edited the manuscript; B. F. performed the experiments; M. Y. performed the experiments and analyzed the data; B. T. and H. Y. edited the manuscript, and D. S. conducted the conceptualization, wrote, reviewed, and edited the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Dongchang Sun.

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Hu, S., Fei, M., Fu, B. et al. Development of probiotic E. coli Nissle 1917 for β-alanine production by using protein and metabolic engineering. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 107, 2277–2288 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-023-12477-5

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