Conversion of Glycerol to 3-Hydroxypropanoic Acid by Genetically Engineered Bacillus subtilis
Journal article, 2017

3-Hydroxypropanoic acid (3-HP) is an important biomass-derivable platform chemical that can be converted into a number of industrially relevant compounds. There have been several attempts to produce 3-HP from renewable sources in cell factories, focusing mainly on Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Despite the significant progress made in this field, commercially exploitable large-scale production of 3-HP in microbial strains has still not been achieved. In this study, we investigated the potential of Bacillus subtilis as a microbial platform for bioconversion of glycerol into 3-HP. Our recombinant B. subtilis strains overexpress the two-step heterologous pathway containing glycerol dehydratase and aldehyde dehydrogenase from K. pneumoniae. Genetic engineering, driven by in silico optimization, and optimization of cultivation conditions resulted in a 3-HP titer of 10 g/L, in a standard batch cultivation. Our findings provide the first report of successful introduction of the biosynthetic pathway for conversion of glycerol into 3-HP in B. subtilis. With this relatively high titer in batch, and the robustness of B. subtilis in high density fermentation conditions, we expect that our production strains may constitute a solid basis for commercial production of 3-HP.

glycerol kinase knock-out

3-hydroxypropanoic acid

metabolic engineering

Bacillus subtilis

glycerol

Author

Aida Kalantari

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Systems and Synthetic Biology

Tao Chen

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Systems and Synthetic Biology

Boyang Ji

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Systems and Synthetic Biology

Ivan Andreas Stancik

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Systems and Synthetic Biology

Vaishnavi Ravikumar

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Systems and Synthetic Biology

D. Franjevic

University of Zagreb

C. Saulou-Berion

University Paris-Saclay

A. Goelzer

University Paris-Saclay

Ivan Mijakovic

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Systems and Synthetic Biology

Frontiers in Microbiology

1664302x (eISSN)

Vol. 8 APR 638

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Subject Categories

Chemical Process Engineering

Bioenergy

DOI

10.3389/fmicb.2017.00638

More information

Latest update

5/13/2022