Synthetic redesign of Escherichia coli for cadaverine production from galactose

Background: With increasing concerns over the environment, biological production of cadaverine has been suggested as an alternative route to replace polyamides generated from the petroleum-based process. For an ideal bioprocess, cadaverine should be produced with high yield and productivity from various sugars abundant in biomass. However, most microorganisms are not able to efficiently metabolize other biomass-derived sugars as fast as glucose. This results in reduced growth rate and low carbon flux toward the production of desired bio-chemicals. Thus, redesign of microorganisms is necessary for utilizing those carbon sources with enhanced carbon flux and product formation. Results: In this study, we engineered Escherichia coli to produce cadaverine with rapid assimilation of galactose, a promising future feedstock. To achieve this, genes related to the metabolic pathway were maximally expressed to amplify the flux toward cadaverine production via synthetic expression cassettes consisting of predictive and quantitative genetic parts (promoters, 5'-untranslated regions, and terminators). Furthermore, the feedback inhibition of metabolic enzymes and degradation/re-uptake pathways was inactivated to robustly produce cadaverine. Finally, the resultant strain, DHK4, produced 8.80 g/L cadaverine with high yield (0.170 g/g) and productivity (0.293 g/L/h) during fed-batch fermentation, which was similar to or better than the previous glucose fermentation. Conclusions: Taken together, synthetic redesign of a microorganism with predictive and quantitative genetic parts is a prerequisite for converting sugars from abundant biomass into desired platform chemicals. This is the first report to produce cadaverine from galactose. Moreover, the yield (0.170 g/g) was the highest among engineered E. coli systems.