Metabolic engineering of L-valine synthesis and secretory pathways in Corynebacterium glutamicum for higher production

Abstract

Corynebacterium glutamicum is the main industrial strain to produce L-valine by microbial fermentation. In this study, a low L-alanine producing C. glutamicum strain VWB-2 was constructed by knocking out the alanine aminotransferase encoding gene alaT in a high L-valine producing strain VWB-1. Meanwhile, a site-directed mutagenesis (ilvBN₁ (M13)) was done on the regulatory subunit of acetohydroxyacid synthase (ilvBN), a key enzyme in the L-valine synthesis pathway. Furthermore, the overexpression of the genes involved in the biosynthesis of L-valine, the mutated ilvBN₁ (M13), the acetohydroxy acid isomerase coding genes ilvC, the dihydroxy-acid dehydratase coding gene ilvD and branched-chain amino acid aminotransferase coding gene ilvE, could all promote the L-valine production of VWB-1 by strengthening the carbon flow towards L-valine. With the overexpression of the branched chain amino acid transporter coding gene brnFE and its regulator lrp₁, the L-valine producing capability of VWB-1 was further enhanced. The finally obtained engineered strain VWB-2/pEC-XK99E-ilvBN₁ (M13)CE-lrp₁-brnFE could produce 461.4 mmol/L L-valine in a 5 L fermentor with a sugar acid conversion rate of 0.312 g/g glucose.