Photosynthetic Co-production of Succinate and Ethylene in a Fast-Growing Cyanobacterium, Synechococcus elongatus PCC 11801

Cyanobacteria are emerging as hosts for photoautotrophic production of chemicals. Recent studies have attempted to stretch the limits of photosynthetic production, typically focusing on one product at a time, possibly to minimise the additional burden of product separation. Here, we explore the simu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Metabolites 2020-06, Vol.10 (6), p.250
Main Authors: Sengupta, Annesha, Pritam, Prem, Jaiswal, Damini, Bandyopadhyay, Anindita, Pakrasi, Himadri B., Wangikar, Pramod P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
13C isotopic labelling
Antibiotics
BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Carbon
Cell culture
CRISPR
CRISPR-Cpf1
Cyanobacteria
Dehydrogenases
Drug resistance
Enzymes
Ethylene
Genes
Genomes
INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
Labeling
Metabolic engineering
Metabolism
metabolomics
Productivity
succinate
Synechococcus elongatus
Synthetic biology
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Summary:Cyanobacteria are emerging as hosts for photoautotrophic production of chemicals. Recent studies have attempted to stretch the limits of photosynthetic production, typically focusing on one product at a time, possibly to minimise the additional burden of product separation. Here, we explore the simultaneous production of two products that can be easily separated: ethylene, a gaseous product, and succinate, an organic acid that accumulates in the culture medium. This was achieved by expressing a single copy of the ethylene forming enzyme (efe) under the control of PcpcB, the inducer-free super-strong promoter of phycocyanin β subunit. We chose the recently reported, fast-growing and robust cyanobacterium, Synechococcus elongatus PCC 11801, as the host strain. A stable recombinant strain was constructed using CRISPR-Cpf1 in a first report of markerless genome editing of this cyanobacterium. Under photoautotrophic conditions, the recombinant strain shows specific productivities of 338.26 and 1044.18 μmole/g dry cell weight/h for ethylene and succinate, respectively. These results compare favourably with the reported productivities for individual products in cyanobacteria that are highly engineered. Metabolome profiling and 13C labelling studies indicate carbon flux redistribution and suggest avenues for further improvement. Our results show that S. elongatus PCC 11801 is a promising candidate for metabolic engineering.
ISSN:2218-1989
2218-1989
DOI:10.3390/metabo10060250