Zhenya Chen

Study the effect of His-tag on chondroitinase ABC I based on characterization of enzyme

Chondroitinase ABC I (ChSase ABC I) which could degrade chondroitin sulfate (CS) to low molecular weight CS was expressed with His-tag in Escherichia coli (E. coli) BL21(DE3). The effect of His-tag on ChSase ABC I was investigated compared with ChSase ABC I which cut His-tag for the first time. After three steps purification, the specific activity of His-ChSase ABC I was 201.9±5.4 IU/mg which was two times lower than ChSase ABC I. Results of multi angle light scattering (MALS) and analytical ultracentrifugation (AUC) showed that the polymeric state of His-ChSase ABC I was not effected by His-tag and it was monomer, and ChSase ABC I was the same. The optimal temperature and pH of His-ChSase ABC I were 37 °C and 7.5, and were almost same with ChSase ABC I. Vmax and kcat/Km of His-ChSase ABC I were 2.4±0.1 μmol/Ls, and 22.2±0.4 L/(μmols) and catalytic efficiency was lower than ChSase ABC I. Generally, His-tag had no effect on polymeric state, optimal temperature and pH, had little negative impact on specific activity, kcat/Km and secondary-structure of ChSase ABC I. This study might guide the application of ChSase ABC I in industrial production.

Metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli for microbial synthesis of monolignols

Monolignols are important plant metabolites involved in lignin biosynthesis. Their derivatives exhibit various physiological and pharmaceutical functions. Here, efficient enzymes were selected to construct p-coumaryl alcohol biosynthetic pathway and the titer reached 501.8±41.4mg/L under optimized conditions. The pathway was further extended to produce caffeyl alcohol and coniferyl alcohol by introducing a hydroxylase and methyltransferases. However, the promiscuity of the hydroxylase HpaBC led to the formation of an instable intermediate L-dopa from tyrosine, causing loss of the carbon sources. To solve this problem, microbial co-cultures were designed to minimize the accessibility of HpaBC to tyrosine. With the optimal inoculation ratio, 401.0±15.3mg/L of caffeyl alcohol was produced, which is nearly 12 times higher than that of the mono-culture. The titer reached 854.1±44.6mg/L in scale-up production. The same strategy was used for coniferyl alcohol production. Limited by the activity of methyltransferases, the highest titer was 124.9±5.1mg/L with 232.9±15.1mg/L of caffeyl alcohol accumulated. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report about microbial production of caffeyl alcohol and coniferyl alcohol. This work also demonstrated the promising potential of microbial co-cultures for prevention of side-reactions.

Enzyme activity enhancement of chondroitinase ABC I from Proteus vulgaris by site-directed mutagenesis

Chondroitin sulfate (CS) is widely applied in the medical industry, especially CS B which is a kind of CS and widely used in the field of food industry, medicine and scientific research. Because of the high molecular weight of CSs, many functions could not be realized effectively. Chondroitinase ABC I (ChSase ABC I) could degrade CS to low molecular weight CS. In this study, ChSase ABC I was expressed with a maltose binding protein (MBP) tag, and site-directed mutagenesis based on both sequence alignment and molecular docking simulation analysis was conducted. 13 amino acids were selected to be mutated to Ala separately for the first time, 8 out of the 13 single-amino-acid mutants showed decreased activity with CS A as substrate and 11 of them showed decreased activity with CS B as substrate. Mutating Arg660 to Ala caused a total loss of the enzyme activity either with CS A or CS B as substrate, indicating that Arg660 was one of the active sites of ChSase ABC I. The specific activities of Asn795Ala and Trp818Ala were 1.39 and 1.38 times higher than that of wild type enzyme with CS A as substrate, and 1.85 and 1.71 times higher with CS B as substrate. In particular, the specific activity of Asn795Ala in this study was the highest among the reported ones. The kinetic parameters as well as the thermostabilities of the two mutants also showed significant improvement when compared with those of the wild type enzyme.

High-level De novo biosynthesis of arbutin in engineered Escherichia coli

Arbutin is a hydroquinone glucoside compound existing in various plants. It is widely used in pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries owing to its well-known skin-lightening property as well as anti-oxidant, anti-microbial, and anti-inflammatory activities. Currently, arbutin is usually produced by plant extraction or enzymatic processes, which suffer from low product yield and expensive processing cost. In this work, we established an artificial pathway in Escherichia coli for high-level production of arbutin from simple carbon sources. First, a 4-hydroxybenzoate 1-hydroxylase from Candida parapsilosis CBS604 and a glucosyltransferase from Rauvolfia serpentina were characterized by in vitro enzyme assays. Introduction of these two genes into E. coli led to the production of 54.71mg/L of arbutin from glucose. Further redirection of carbon flux into arbutin biosynthesis pathway by enhancing shikimate pathway genes enabled production of 3.29g/L arbutin, which is a 60-fold increase compared with the initial strain. Final optimization of glucose concentration added in the culture medium was able to further improve the titer of arbutin to 4.19g/L in shake flasks experiments, which is around 77-fold higher than that of initial strain. This work established de novo biosynthesis of arbutin from simple carbon sources and provided a generalizable strategy for the biosynthesis of shikimate pathway derived chemicals. The high titer achieved in our engineered strain also indicates the potential for industrial scale bio-manufacturing of arbutin.

Rational engineering of p‐hydroxybenzoate hydroxylase to enable efficient gallic acid synthesis via a novel artificial biosynthetic pathway

Gallic acid (GA) is a naturally occurring phytochemical that has strong antioxidant and antibacterial activities. It is also used as a potential platform chemical for the synthesis of diverse high‐value compounds. Hydrolytic degradation of tannins by acids, bases or microorganisms serves as a major way for GA production, which however, might cause environmental pollution and low yield and efficiency. Here, we report a novel approach for efficient microbial production of GA. First, structure‐based rational engineering of PobA, a p‐hydroxybenzoate hydroxylase from Pseudomonas aeruginosa, generated a new mutant, Y385F/T294A PobA, which displayed much higher activity toward 3,4‐dihydroxybenzoic acid (3,4‐DHBA) than the wild‐type and any other reported mutants. Remarkably, expression of this mutant in Escherichia coli enabled generation of 1149.59 mg/L GA from 1000 mg/L 4‐hydroxybenzoic acid (4‐HBA), representing a 93% molar conversion ratio. Based on that, we designed and reconstituted a novel artificial biosynthetic pathway of GA and achieved 440.53 mg/L GA production from simple carbon sources in E. coli. Further enhancement of precursor supply through reinforcing shikimate pathway was able to improve GA de novo production to 1266.39 mg/L in shake flasks. Overall, this study not only led to the development of a highly active PobA variant for hydroxylating 3,4‐DHBA into GA via structure‐based protein engineering approach, but also demonstrated a promising pathway for bio‐based manufacturing of GA and its derived compounds. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2017;114: 2571–2580.

Expression, purification and thermostability of MBP-chondroitinase ABC I from Proteus vulgaris

Chondroitinase ABC I (ChSase ABC I) which can degrade chondroitin sulfate (CS) and other glycosaminoglycan to oligosaccharide or unsaturated disaccharide, was fusionally expressed with maltose-binding protein (MBP) in Escherichia coli BL21(DE3) (E. coli BL21(DE3)) and purified for the first time in this study. The result showed that the productivity of recombinant MBP-ChSase ABC I was 3180 IU/(L fermentation liquor) with CS A as substrate, and the productivity might be the highest level when compared to the reported ones. The specific activity of recombinant MBP-ChSase ABC I was 76 IU/(mg protein) after purification. The Vmax, Km and kcat were 18.7 ± 0.3 μmol/Ls, 73.1 ± 4.1 μmol/L and 586.7 ± 10.8 s(-1), respectively. Enzyme activity of the purified enzyme remained about 78% after 210 min when the enzyme incubated at 30 °C. This study introduces a rapid method for highly expressing ChSase ABC I, and the method could be adopted in the process of industrial production. Furthermore the investigation of thermostability might lead to an important guide in clinical treatment.

Investigation of the synergetic effect of xylose metabolic pathways on the production of glutaric acid

Efficient utilization of lignocellulose is pivotal for economically converting renewable feedstocks into value-added products. Xylose is the second most abundant sugar in lignocellulose, but it is quite challenging to ferment xylose as efficiently as glucose by microorganisms. Here, we investigated the metabolic potential of three xylose catabolic pathways (isomerase, Weimberg, and Dahms pathways) and illustrated the synergetic effect between the isomerase pathway and Weimberg pathway for the synthesis of chemicals derived from 2-ketoglutarate and acetyl-CoA. When using glutaric acid as the target product, employment of such synergetic pathways in combination resulted in an increased glutaric acid titer (602 mg/L) compared with using each pathway alone (104 or 209 mg/L), and this titer even outcompetes that obtained from the glucose catabolic pathway for glutaric acid synthesis (420 mg/L). This work validates a novel and powerful strategy for xylose metabolic utilization to overcome the inefficiency of using a single xylose metabolic pathway for the synthesis of TCA cycle derived chemicals.

Establishing an Artificial Pathway for De Novo Biosynthesis of Vanillyl Alcohol in Escherichia coli

Vanillyl alcohol is a phenolic alcohol and is used as a flavoring agent in foods and beverages. In this paper, we propose a novel artificial pathway for microbial production of vanillyl alcohol from simple carbon sources. The pathway extends from 4-hydroxybenzoic acid (4-HBA), and needs only three heterologous enzymes, p-hydroxybenzoate hydroxylase (PobA), carboxylic acid reductase (CAR) and caffeate O-methyltransferase (COMT). First, we examined the promiscuous activity of COMT toward 3,4-dihydroxybenzyl alcohol and found a kcat value of 0.097 s-1. Meanwhile, 499.36 mg/L vanillyl alcohol was produced by COMT in vivo catalysis when fed with 1000 mg/L 3,4-dihydroxybenzyl alcohol. In the following experiment, de novo biosynthesis of vanillyl alcohol was carried out and 240.69 mg/L vanillyl alcohol was produced via modular optimization of pathway genes. This work was to date the first achievement for microbial production of vanillyl alcohol. Additionally, the present study demonstrates the application of enzyme promiscuity of COMT in the design of an artificial pathway for the production of high-value methylated aromatic compounds.

Investigating the strategies for microbial production of trehalose from lignocellulosic sugars

Trehalose, a multi-functional and value-added disaccharide, can be efficiently biosynthesized from glucose by using a synergetic carbon utilization mechanism (SynCar) which coupled phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) generation from the second carbon source with PEP-dependent phosphotransferase system (PTS) to promote non-catabolic use of glucose. Considering glucose and xylose present in large amounts in lignocellulosic sugars, we explored new strategies for conversion of both sugars into trehalose. Herein, we first attempted trehalose production from xylose directly, based on which, synergetic utilization of glucose, and xylose prompted by SynCar was implemented in engineered Escherichia coli. As the results, the final titer of trehalose reached 5.55 g/L in shake flask experiments. The conversion ratio or utilization efficiency of glucose or xylose to trehalose was around fourfold higher than that of the original strain (YW-3). This work not only demonstrated the possibility of directly converting xylose (C5 sugar) into trehalose (C12 disaccharide), but also suggested a promising strategy for trehalose production from lignocellulosic sugars for the first time.

Establishing an Artificial Pathway for Efficient Biosynthesis of Hydroxytyrosol

Hydroxytyrosol (HT) is a valuable natural phenolic compound with strong antioxidant activity and various physiological and pharmaceutical functions. In this study, we established an artificial pathway for HT biosynthesis. First, efficient enzymes were selected to construct a tyrosol biosynthetic pathway. Aro10 from Saccharomyces cerevisiae was shown to be a better ketoacid decarboxylase than Kivd from Lactococcus lactis for tyrosol production. While knockout of feaB significantly decreased accumulation of the byproduct 4-hydroxyphenylacetic acid, overexpression of alcohol dehydrogenase ADH6 further improved tyrosol production. The titers of tyrosol reached 1469 ± 56 mg/L from tyrosine and 620 ± 23 mg/L from simple carbon sources, respectively. The pathway was further extended for HT production by overexpressing Escherichia coli native hydroxylase HpaBC. To enhance transamination of tyrosine to 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate, NH4Cl was removed from the culture media. To decrease oxidation of HT, ascorbic acid was added to the cell culture. To reduce the toxicity of HT, 1-dodecanol was selected as the extractant for in situ removal of HT. These efforts led to an additive increase in HT titer to 1243 ± 165 mg/L in the feeding experiment. Assembly of the full pathway resulted in 647 ± 35 mg/L of HT from simple carbon sources. This work provides a promising alternative for sustainable production of HT, which shows scale-up potential.