Integrating balanced mevalonate pathway into chromosome for improving lycopene production in Escherichia coli

Abstract

Isoprenoids are all derived from two five-carbon building blocks called isopentenyl diphosphate (IPP) and dimethylallyl diphosphate (DMAPP), which are synthesized either by the mevalonate (MVA) pathway or 2-C-methyld-D-erythritol-4-phosphate (MEP) pathway. In this study, the MVA pathway genes were integrated into the chromosome of LYC101, in which the expression of key genes in the MEP synthesis pathway and lycopene synthesis pathway were optimized by artificial regulatory parts, to further improve the production of isoprenoids in Escherichia coli. The plasmids pALV23 and pALV145 were screened from a plasmid library that constructed by using the RBS library to link the genes of the MVA pathway, which greatly increased the production of β-carotene. The effects of plasmids pALV23 and pALV145 on the lycopene production in low and high lycopene production strain, LYC001 and LYC101, were compared, respectively. The production of lycopene was increased by plasmids pALV23 and pALV145 in both strains. In high lycopene production strain LYC101, pALV23 produced more lycopene than pALV145. Then, the MVA gene together of promoter of pALV23 was integrated into the chromosome of LYC101 at poxB site using method of homologous recombination helped by CRISPR-Cas9 system, resulted in genetically stable strain, LYC102. The yield of lycopene of LYC102 was 40.9 mg/g DCW, 1.19-folds higher than that of LYC101, and 20% more than that of LYC101 with pALV23. Simultaneous expression of MVA pathway and MEP pathway in recombinant E. coli can effectively increase the yield of terpenoids. In this study, a plasmid-free, genetically stable, high-yielding lycopene strain was constructed, which could be used for industrialization. Also, the platform strain can be used for the synthesis of other terpenoids.