title: Engineering Escherichia coli coculture systems for the production of biochemical products.
abstract: Engineering microbial consortia to express complex biosynthetic pathways efficiently for the production of valuable compounds is a promising approach for metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. Here, we report the design, optimization, and scale-up of an Escherichia coli-E. coli coculture that successfully overcomes fundamental microbial production limitations, such as high-level intermediate secretion and low-efficiency sugar mixture utilization. For the production of the important chemical cis,cis-muconic acid, we show that the coculture approach achieves a production yield of 0.35 g/g from a glucose/xylose mixture, which is significantly higher than reported in previous reports. By efficiently producing another compound, 4-hydroxybenzoic acid, we also demonstrate that the approach is generally applicable for biosynthesis of other important industrial products.
authors.affiliation: Chemical Engineering Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139.
authors.forename: Haoran
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Chemical Engineering Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139.
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Pereira
authors.affiliation: Chemical Engineering Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139.
authors.forename: Zhengjun
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Chemical Engineering Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 gregstep@mit.edu.
authors.forename: Gregory
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Stephanopoulos
mesh_terms: D001431:Bacteriological Techniques / Q000379:methods; D001483:Base Sequence; D053898:Biosynthetic Pathways / Q000235:genetics; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D005947:Glucose / Q000378:metabolism; D007218:Industrial Microbiology / Q000379:methods; D060847:Metabolic Engineering / Q000379:methods*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010226:Parabens / Q000378:metabolism; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013011:Sorbic Acid / Q000031:analogs & derivatives* / Q000378:metabolism; D058615:Synthetic Biology / Q000379:methods*; D014994:Xylose / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins; D010226:Parabens; C005939:muconic acid; D014994:Xylose; D005947:Glucose; C038193:4-hydroxybenzoic acid; D013011:Sorbic Acid
keywords: 4-hydroxybenzoic acid; metabolic engineering; microbial coculture; muconic acid