Optimum Rebalancing of the 3-Hydroxypropionic Acid Production Pathway from Glycerol in Escherichia coli

Abstract

3-Hydroxypropionic acid (3-HP) can be biologically produced from glycerol by two consecutive enzymatic reactions, dehydration of glycerol to 3-hydroxypropionaldehyde (3-HPA) and oxidation of 3-HPA. The pathway has been proved efficient, but imbalance between the rates of the two enzymatic reactions often results in the accumulation of the toxic 3-HPA, which severely reduces cell viability and 3-HP production. In this study, we used UTR engineering to maximally increase the activities of glycerol dehydratase (GDHt) and aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) for the high conversion of glycerol to 3-HP. Thereafter, the activity of GDHt was precisely controlled to avoid the accumulation of 3-HPA by varying expression of dhaB1, a gene encoding a main subunit of GDHt. The optimally balanced E. coil HGL_DBK4 showed a substantially enhanced 3-HP titer and productivity compared with the parental strain. The yield on glycerol, 0.97 g 3HP/g glycerol, in a fed-batch experiment, was the highest ever reported.