Dynamic control of the mevalonate pathway expression for improved zeaxanthin production in Escherichia coli and comparative proteome analysis.

Engineered heterologous multi-gene metabolic pathways often suffer from flux imbalance and toxic metabolites, as the production host typically lacks the regulatory mechanisms for the heterologous pathway. Here, we first coordinated the expression of all genes of the mevalonate (MEV) pathway from Saccharomyces cerevisiae using the tunable intergenic regions (TIGRs), and then dynamically regulated the TIGR-mediated MEV pathway to prevent the accumulation of toxic metabolites by using IPP/FPP-responsive promoter. After introduction of the dynamically controlled TIGR-mediated MEV pathway into Escherichia coli, the content and concentration of zeaxanthin in shaker flask cultures were 2.0- and 2.1-fold higher, respectively, than those of the strain harboring the statically controlled non-TIGR-mediated MEV pathway. The content and concentration of zeaxanthin in E. coli ZEAX (pZSPgadE-MevTTIGR-MevBTIGRIS-2) reached 722.46mg/L and 23.16mg/g dry cell weight (DCW), respectively, in 5.0L fed-batch fermentation. We also comparatively analyzed the proteomes between E. coli ZEAX and E. coli ZEAX (pZSPgadE-MevTTIGR-MevBTIGRIS-2) to understand the mechanism of zeaxanthin biosynthesis. The results of the comparative proteomes demonstrate that zeaxanthin overproduction may be associated with increased precursor availability, increased NADPH availability, increased ATP availability, oxidative stress response, and increased membrane storage capacity for zeaxanthin due to changes in both cellular shape and membrane composition.

Metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli to produce zeaxanthin.

Zeaxanthin is a high-value carotenoid that is used in nutraceuticals, cosmetics, food, and animal feed industries. Zeaxanthin is chemically synthesized or purified from microorganisms as a natural product; however, increasing demand requires development of alternative sources such as heterologous biosynthesis by recombinant bacteria. For this purpose, we molecularly engineered Escherichia coli to optimize the synthesis of zeaxanthin from lycopene using fusion protein-mediated substrate channeling as well as by the introduction of tunable intergenic regions. The tunable intergenic regions approach was more efficient compared with protein fusion for coordinating expression of lycopene ß-cyclase gene crtY and ß-carotene 3-hydroxylase gene crtZ. The influence of the substrate channeling effect suggests that the reaction catalyzed by CrtZ is the rate-limiting step in zeaxanthin biosynthesis. Then Pantoea ananatis, Pantoea agglomerans and Haematococcus pluvialis crtZ were compared. Because P. ananatis crtZ is superior to that of P. agglomerans or H. pluvialis for zeaxanthin production, we used it to generate a recombinant strain of E. coli BETA-1 containing pZSPBA-2(P37-crtZPAN) that produced higher amounts of zeaxanthin (11.95 ± 0.21 mg/g dry cell weight) than other engineered E. coli strains described in the literature.