Metabolic recombination

Lee SH, Kodak T, Park YC, Seo JH. (2012). Effects of NADH-preferring xylose reductase expression on ethanol production from xylose in xylose-metabolizing recombinant Saccharomyces cerevisiae. J Biotechnol, 158, 184-191. 

Another way to enhance the production of an amino acid is to make use of DNA-recombinant technology, often in combination with foe mutations already described. In this way foe negative features of foe micro-organisms are avoided. To help explain this, we will consider a well known fermentation of L-phenylalanine using Escherichia coli. We have already seen foe metabolic pathway leading to foe production of L-phenylalanine in Figure 8.4. 

Metabolic pathways containing dioxygenases in wild-type strains are usually related to detoxification processes upon conversion of aromatic xenobiotics to phenols and catechols, which are more readily excreted. Within such pathways, the intermediate chiral cis-diol is rearomatized by a dihydrodiol-dehydrogenase. While this mild route to catechols is also exploited synthetically [221], the chirality is lost. In the context of asymmetric synthesis, such further biotransformations have to be prevented, which was initially realized by using mutant strains deficient in enzymes responsible for the rearomatization. Today, several dioxygenases with complementary substrate profiles are available, as outlined in Table 9.6. Considering the delicate architecture of these enzyme complexes, recombinant whole-cell-mediated biotransformations are the only option for such conversions. E. coli is preferably used as host and fermentation protocols have been optimized [222,223]. 

Eaton RW, PJ Chapman (1992) Bacterial metabolism of naphthalene construction and use of recombinant bacteria to study ring cleavage of 1,2-dihydroxy naphthalene and subsequent reactions. J Bacteriol 174 7542-7554. 

Other assays for assessing CYP clearance are also employed, although often less widely or with lower compound throughput. Recombinant CYP enzymes allow the determination of the kinetic parameters for metabolism of individual compounds by individual CYPs. Recombinant CYPs also provide an avenue to assessing and understanding the potential for drug-drug interactions that may occur between two or more compounds. 

It is worth mentioning that metabolic engineering of E. coli recently provided recombinant strains which synthesized PHAMCL from gluconate. For this, beside phaC2Po or phaClPa> the thioesterase I from E. coli (TesA) [128] or the acyl-ACP thioesterase from Umbellularia californica [129], respectively, were expressed in E. coli. However, the amounts of PHAMCL accumulated in the cells were rather low, and this artificial pathway was not very efficient. 

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