Metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli for production of lacto-N-neotetraose
摘要
Lacto-N-neotetraose is an abundant human milk oligosaccharide with multifaceted physiological functions. In this study, Escherichia coli MG1655 has been used as the chassis strain for lacto-N-neotetraose production. First, the genes lacz, ugd, gcd, nagB, ushA, setA were deleted in MG1655, and the Neisseria meningitidis genes lgtA and lgtB encoding β-1,3-N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase and β-1,4-galactosyltransferase, respectively, were overexpressed, and the resulting strain WY011/pC-A/pR-B could produce 1.102 g/L lacto-N-neotetraose. Next, the rate-limiting gene overexpression, expression vector screening, and ribosome-binding site strength were optimized, and the resulting strain WY011/pR-BEA1R could produce 2.634 g/L lacto-N-neotetraose. Further optimization of fermentation parameters enabled the engineered strain WY011/pR-BEA1R to produce 3.533 g/L lacto-N-neotetraose, and a whole-cell catalysis process developed by using this strain with the mixed substrates of glycerol, lactose, and galactose boosted the titer to 10.845 g/L, which is the highest reported titer in small-scale systems so far. Ultimately, fed-batch fermentation of the strain WY011/pR-BEA1R in a 2-L bioreactor achieved an LNnT titer of 16.202 g/L.