Metabolic engineering of the anaerobic central metabolic pathway in Escherichia coli for the simultaneous anaerobic production of isoamyl acetate and succinic acid

An in vivo method of producing isoamyl acetate and succinate simultaneously has been developed in Escherichia coli to maximize yields of both high value compounds as well as maintain the proper redox balance between NADH and NAD⁺. Previous attempts at producing the ester isoamyl acetate anaerobically did not produce the compound in high concentrations because of competing pathways and the need for NAD⁺ regeneration. The objective of this study is to produce succinate as an example of a reduced coproduct to balance the ratio of NADH/NAD⁺ as a way of maximizing isoamyl acetate production. Because the volatility of the two compounds differs greatly, the two could be easily separated in an industrial setting. An ldhA, adhE double mutant strain (SBS110MG) served as the control strain to test the effect of an additional ackA‐pta mutation as found in SBS990MG. Both strains overexpressed the two heterologous genes pyruvate carboxylase and alcohol acetyltransferase (for ester production). The triple mutant SBS990MG was found to produce higher levels of both isoamyl acetate and succinate. At the optimal condition of 25°C, the culture produced 9.4 mM isoamyl acetate and 45.5 mM succinate. SBS990MG produced 36% more ester and over 700% more succinate than SBS110MG. In addition, this study demonstrated that a significantly higher isoamyl acetate concentration can be attained by simultaneously balancing the carbon and cofactor flow; the isoamyl acetate concentration of 9.4 mM is more than seven times higher than an earlier report of about 1.2 mM. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 2009