Biotransformation of p-xylene into terephthalic acid by engineered Escherichia coli.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 28561070.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms15689 and PMC identifier 5460024.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Terephthalic acid (TPA) is an important industrial chemical currently produced by energy intensive and potentially hazardous p-xylene (pX) oxidation process. Here we report the development of metabolically engineered Escherichia coli system for biological transformation of pX into TPA. The engineered E. coli strain harbours a synthetic TPA pathway optimized through manipulation of expression levels of upstream and downstream modules. The upstream pathway converts pX to p-toluic acid (pTA) and the downstream pathway transforms pTA to TPA. In a two-phase partitioning fermentation, the engineered strain converts 8.8 g pX into 13.3 g TPA, which corresponds to a conversion yield of 96.7 mol%. These results suggest that the E. coli system presented here might be a promising alternative for the large-scale biotechnological production of TPA and lays the foundations for the future development of sustainable approaches for TPA production.
Medical subject headings
- Escherichia coli
- Metabolic Engineering
- Phthalic Acids
- Xylenes