Engineering E. coli for the production of 3-aminopropionic acid

Abstract

We report metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli for the production of 3-aminopropionic acid (3-AP). A fumarate-producing E. coli strain was modified bychromosomal overexpression of aspA (aspartase), enabling conversion of fumarate toaspartate. Aspartate was then converted to 3-AP by expression of the C. glutamicumpanD gene (L-aspartate-α-decarboxylase). Additional overexpression of the aspA andphosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (ppc) genes allowed production of 3.49 g/L 3-AP.Further optimization of the ppc expression, combined with chromosomal overexpressionof acs, resulted in production of 32.3 g/L 3-AP in 39 h in fed-batch. [This work wassupported by the Technology Development Program to Solve Climate Changes onSystems Metabolic Engineering for Biorefineries from the Ministry of Science, ICT andFuture Planning (MSIP) through the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea. MG also received support from theSwedish research council Formas].