Development of a novel recombinant strain Zygosacharomyces rouxii JL2011 for 1,3-propanediol production from glucose

1,3-propanediol (1,3-PDO) is one of the most important industrial chemicals due to its highly desired properties and its wide applications as a key component of the emerging polymer industry. Biotechnology route has been one of the most interesting methods for 1,3-PDO production, whereas, the dha genes were essential to 1,3-PDO biosynthesis. In this study, we cloned and placed the dha cassettes under the control of a glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase gene promoter pGAP and homologous ZrFPS1 gene promoter pZrfps1; these two promoters were further integrated into the chromosome of Z. rouxii JL2011 to generate recombinant strain JL2011-GZ and JL2011-ZZ, respectively. The results showed that the two strains could produce 1,3-PDO from glucose with a final yield of 6.9 and 10.3 g/l, respectively. The engineered strain JL2011-ZZ showed a 2.3- and 1.5-fold increase in the specific activities and final concentration of 1,3-PDO, respectively, with respect to JL2011-GZ. Batch fermentation with aerobic/micro-aerobic combined strategy of JL2011-ZZ resulted a titer of 17.1 g/l and a yield from glucose of 8.6 %. These results demonstrated that JL2011-ZZ would be a potential strain for 1,3-PDO production from glucose.