Abstract
L-Fucose, one of the major monomeric sugars in brown algae, possesses high potential for use in the large-scale production of bio-based products. Although fucose catabolic pathways have been enzymatically evaluated, the effects of fucose as a carbon source on intracellular metabolism in industrial microorganisms such as Escherichia coli are still not identified. To elucidate the effects of fucose on cellular metabolism and to find clues for efficient conversion of fucose into bio-based products, comparative metabolomic and transcriptomic analyses were performed on E. coli on L-fucose and on D-glucose as a control. When fucose was the carbon source for E. coli, integration of the two omics analyses revealed that excess gluconeogenesis and quorum sensing led to severe depletion of ATP, resulting in accumulation and export of fucose extracellularly. Therefore, metabolic engineering and optimization are needed for E. coil to more efficiently ferment fucose. This is the first multi-omics study investigating the effects of fucose on cellular metabolism in E. coli. These omics data and their biological interpretation could be used to assist metabolic engineering of E. coli producing bio-based products using fucose-containing brown macroalgae.
Highlights
Owing to increasing concerns surrounding energy security and global warming, lignocellulose [1,2,3] and macroalgae are considered as important biomass resources for the production of biofuels and bio-based products using microorganisms [4]
We found that the metabolic activity of E. coli responds differently when grown on two different carbon sources, fucose or glucose, as identified using metabolomics and transcriptomics
We found that culturing E. coli on fucose leads to inefficient carbon metabolism, resulting in transcriptomics
Summary
Owing to increasing concerns surrounding energy security and global warming, lignocellulose [1,2,3] and macroalgae are considered as important biomass resources for the production of biofuels and bio-based products using microorganisms [4]. Alginate, laminarin, mannitol, and fucoidan are the major carbohydrates [7,8]. To convert these carbohydrates in brown macroalgae into biofuels and chemicals in a more efficient and economical manner, understanding the metabolism of the monomeric sugars of these carbohydrates in fermentative microorganisms is essential [1,2,3,8]. The current price of L-fucose is high [11], it has high potential to be used for production of bio-based products owing to its high abundance in diverse environments such as brown macroalgae and biofilms [10,11,12]. L-fucose is used as a substrate for the microbial production of
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