title: Improving alkane synthesis in Escherichia coli via metabolic engineering.
abstract: Concerns about energy security and global petroleum supply have made the production of renewable biofuels an industrial imperative. The ideal biofuels are n-alkanes in that they are chemically and structurally identical to the fossil fuels and can "drop in" to the transportation infrastructure. In this work, an Escherichia coli strain that produces n-alkanes was constructed by heterologous expression of acyl-acyl carrier protein (ACP) reductase (AAR) and aldehyde deformylating oxygenase (ADO) from Synechococcus elongatus PCC7942. The accumulation of alkanes ranged from 3.1 to 24.0 mg/L using different expressing strategies. Deletion of yqhD, an inherent aldehyde reductase in E. coli, or overexpression of fadR, an activator for fatty acid biosynthesis, exhibited a nearly twofold increase in alkane titers, respectively. Combining yqhD deletion and fadR overexpression resulted in a production titer of 255.6 mg/L in E. coli, and heptadecene was the most abundant product.
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Microbial Physiological and Metabolic Engineering, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
authors.forename: Xuejiao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Microbial Physiological and Metabolic Engineering, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
authors.forename: Haiying
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Microbial Physiological and Metabolic Engineering, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China. zhuk@im.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Kun
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Zhu
mesh_terms: D000449:Aldehyde Reductase / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D000473:Alkanes / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism*; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D056804:Biofuels / Q000032:analysis; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D005227:Fatty Acids / Q000096:biosynthesis; D060847:Metabolic Engineering / Q000379:methods*; D010088:Oxidoreductases / Q000235:genetics; D010105:Oxygenases / Q000235:genetics; D012097:Repressor Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D046940:Synechococcus / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D000473:Alkanes; D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D056804:Biofuels; D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins; C057119:FadR protein, Bacteria; D005227:Fatty Acids; D012097:Repressor Proteins; D010088:Oxidoreductases; D000449:Aldehyde Reductase; C528732:YqhD protein, E coli; D010105:Oxygenases
keywords: Aldehyde reductase; Alkane biosynthesis; Biofuels; Escherichia coli; Fatty acid biosynthesis; fadR