A kinetic model of the central carbon metabolism for acrylic acid production in Escherichia coli

Abstract

Acrylic acid (AA) is an important chemical that can be used in the production of a broad spectrum of products used on a daily basis, such as diapers, coatings paints, adhesives, textiles, detergents and plastic additives [1]. In addition, this chemical can also be used in the production of a superabsorbent polymer, which further increases its worldwide demand and commercial value in the industrial business [2]. However, most of the AA currently commercialized is produced by the oxidation of propylene or propane [3]. The production of AA contributes to the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere and relies on the worlds petroleum reserves, which are not renewable and are in rapid decline [2, 4]. Hence, the need for the development of innovative, clean and sustainable biological methods for the production of AA has attracted considerable attention from the scientific community [2, 5, 6]. In the last few years, there has been an effort to optimize the bio-based production of 3-hydroxypropionic acid (3-HP) by Escherichia coli. In this process, 3-HP is purified and converted to AA by catalytic dehydration. Despite such efforts, this method is still energetically demanding and has high production costs, associated with the catalytic process that takes place in the final step. Hence, the current process for the production of AA is not ideal [2]. A method that does not require the catalytic dehydration of 3-HP was put forward to overcome this issue. This method allows producing AA through fermentation by recombinant E. coli [2, 5]. The aim of this work was to perform the in silico insertion of different alternatives of the heterologous pathways for AA production in kinetic models of the central carbon metabolism of E. coli, which will allow to select the best approach to be implemented in vivo. Five models namely, the Chassagnole [7], the Jaham [8], the Kadir [9], the Peskov [10] and the Khodayari [11] models, were evaluated to select the one that better complies with the requirements of this project. The selected model was used to test the different knock-in strategies. References 1. Rolf Beerthuis, Gadi Rothenberg, and Raveendran Shiju. Catalytic routes towards acrylic acid, adipic acid and -caprolactam starting from biorenewables. Green Chemistry, 17(3):13411361, 2015. 2. Hun Su Chu, Jin Ho Ahn, Jiae Yun, In Suk Choi, TaeWook Nam, and Kwang Myung Cho. Direct fermentation route for the production of acrylic acid. Metabolic Engineering, 32:23 29, 2015. 3. Avelino Corma, Sara Iborra, and Alexandra Velty. Chemical routes for the transformation of biomass into chemicals. Chemical Reviews, 107(6):24112502, 2007. 4. Rojan John, Madhavan Nampoothiri, and Ashok Pandey. Fermentative production of lactic acid from biomass: an overview on process developments and future perspectives. Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, 74(3):524534, 2007. 5. Wenhua Tong, Ying Xu, Mo Xian, Wei Niu, Jiantao Guo, Huizhou Liu, and Guang Zhao. Biosynthetic pathway for acrylic acid from glycerol in recombinant Escherichia coli. Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, 100(11):49014907, 2016. 6. Zhijie Liu and Tiangang Liu. Production of acrylic acid and propionic acid by constructing a portion of the 3-hydroxypropionate/4-hydroxybutyrate cycle from Metallosphaera sedula in Escherichia coli. Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology, 43(12):1659 1670, 2016. 7. Christophe Chassagnole, Naruemol Noisommit-Rizzi, Joachim W. Schmid, Klaus Mauch, and Matthias Reuss. Dynamic modeling of the central carbon metabolism of Escherichia coli. Biotechnology and Bioengineering, 79(1): 5373, 2002. 8. Nusrat Jahan, Kazuhiro Maeda, Yu Matsuoka, Yurie Sugimoto, and Hiroyuki Kurata. Development of an accurate kinetic model for the central carbon metabolism of Escherichia coli. Microbial Cell Factories, 15(1): 112, 2016. 9. Tuty Kadir, Ahmad Mannan, Andrzej Kierzek, Johnjoe McFadden, and Kazuyuki Shimizu. Modeling and simulation of the main metabolism in Escherichia coli and its several singlegene knockout mutants with experimental verification. Microbial Cell Factories, 9(1): 88, 2010. 10. Kirill Peskov, Ekaterina Mogilevskaya, and Oleg Demin. Kinetic modelling of central carbon metabolism in Escherichia coli. FEBS Journal, 279(18): 33743385, 2012. 11. Ali Khodayari, Ali Zomorrodi, James Liao, and Costas Maranas. A kinetic model of Escherichia coli core metabolism satisfying multiple sets of mutant flux data. Metabolic Engineering, 25: 5062, 2014