Engineering a mevalonate pathway in for the production of lycopene.

INTRODUCTION

Red-colored lycopene has received remarkable attention in medicine because of its antioxidant properties for reducing the risks of many human cancers. However, the extraction of lycopene from natural hosts is limited. Moreover, the chemically synthesized lycopene raises safety concerns due to residual chemical reagents. is a versatile chassis for the production of fine chemicals because of its open growth property without sterilization.

METHODS

A heterologous mevalonate (MVA) pathway was introduced into strain TD1.0 to engineer a bacterial host for lycopene production. A pTer7 plasmid mediating the expression of six MVA pathway genes under the control of a phage and an promoters and a pTer3 plasmid providing lycopene biosynthesis downstream genes derived from were constructed and transformed into TD1.0. The production of lycopene in the engineered was evaluated. Optimization of engineered bacteria was performed to increase lycopene yield.

RESULTS

The engineered TD1.0/pTer7-pTer3 produced lycopene at a maximum yield of 0.20 mg/g dried cell weight (DCW). Replacing downstream genes with those from elevated the lycopene production to 0.70 mg/g DCW in the TD1.0/pTer7-pTer5 strain. Optimizing the promoter in plasmid pTer7 with a relatively weak even increased the lycopene production to 1.22 mg/g DCW. However, the change in the promoter in pTer7 with did not improve the yield of lycopene.

CONCLUSION

We first engineered an for the lycopene production. The co-optimization of downstream genes and promoters governing MVA pathway gene expressions can synergistically enhance the microbial overproduction of lycopene.