Biosynthesis of medium-chain-length poly(hydroxyalkanoates) with altered composition by mutant hybrid PHA synthases

Pseudomonas resinovorans harbors two isogenic poly(hydroxyalkanoates) (PHAs) synthase genes (phaC1(Pre), phaC2(Pre)) responsible for the production of intracellular medium-chain-length (mcl-)PHAs. Sequence analysis showed that the putative gene-products of these genes contain a conserved alpha/beta-hydrolase fold in the carboxy-terminal half of the proteins. Hybrid genes pha7 and pha8 were constructed by exchanging the alpha/beta-hydrolase-fold coding portions of phaCl(Pre), and phaC2(Pre), at the 3' terminal. When grown with decanoate as carbon source, the pha7- or pha8-transformed Escherichia coli LS1298 produced PHAs containing 73-75% beta-hydroxydecanoate (beta-HD) and 25-27% beta-hydroxyoctanoate (beta-HO). Deletion mutants, Deltapha7 and Deltapha8, were isolated during the PCR-based construction of pha7 and pha8, respectively. Cells harboring these mutants produced PHAs containing 55-60 mol% beta-HD and 40-45 mol% beta-HO. These results demonstrate the feasibility of generating active hybrid mcl-PHA synthase genes and their mutants with the potential of producing polymers having a varied repeat-unit composition.