Engineering an electroactive Escherichia coli for the microbial electrosynthesis of succinate from glucose and CO2

• Published in: Microbial cell factories Vol. 18; no. 1; pp. 15 - 14
• Main Authors: Wu, Zaiqiang, Wang, Junsong, Liu, Jun, Wang, Yan, Bi, Changhao, Zhang, Xueli
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London BioMed Central Ltd 28.01.2019; BioMed Central; BMC
• Subjects: Bacteria; Bioelectrochemical systems; Biosynthesis; Carbon dioxide; CO2 fixation; Cytochrome; E coli; Electricity; Electrochemistry; Electrons; Energy; Escherichia coli; Factories; Fermentation; Fermented food; Genes; Glucose; Industrial engineering; Manufacturing engineering; Metabolism; Microbial electrosynthesis; Microorganisms; Physiological aspects; Plasmids; Proteins; Substrates; Succinate; Succinic acid; China
• DOI: 10.1186/s12934-019-1067-3
• ISSN: 1475-2859

Electrochemical energy is a key factor of biosynthesis, and is necessary for the reduction or assimilation of substrates such as CO.sub.2. Previous microbial electrosynthesis (MES) research mainly utilized naturally electroactive microbes to generate non-specific products. In this research, an electroactive succinate-producing cell factory was engineered in E. coli T110(pMtrABC, pFccA-CymA) by expressing mtrABC, fccA and cymA from Shewanella oneidensis MR-1, which can utilize electricity to reduce fumarate. The electroactive T110 strain was further improved by incorporating a carbon concentration mechanism (CCM). This strain was fermented in an MES system with neutral red as the electron carrier and supplemented with HCO.sub.3.sup.+, which produced a succinate yield of 1.10 mol/mol glucose--a 1.6-fold improvement over the parent strain T110. The strain T110(pMtrABC, pFccA-CymA, pBTCA) is to our best knowledge the first electroactive microbial cell factory engineered to directly utilize electricity for the production of a specific product. Due to the versatility of the E. coli platform, this pioneering research opens the possibility of engineering various other cell factories to utilize electricity for bioproduction.