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Engineering a glycerol utilization pathway in Corynebacterium glutamicum for succinate production under O2 deprivation

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Abstract

Objective

To explore the glycerol utilization pathway in Corynebacterium glutamicum for succinate production under O2 deprivation.

Result

Overexpression of a glycerol facilitator, glycerol dehydrogenase and dihydroxyacetone kinase from Escherichia coli K-12 in C. glutamicum led to recombinant strains NC-3G diverting glycerol utilization towards succinate production under O2 deprivation. Under these conditions, strain NC-3G efficiently consumed glycerol and produced succinate without growth. The recombinant C. glutamicum utilizing glycerol as the sole carbon source showed higher intracellular NADH/NAD+ ratio compare with utilizing glucose. The mass conversion of succinate increased from 0.64 to 0.95. Using an anaerobic fed-batch fermentation process, the final strain produced 38.4 g succinate/l with an average yield of 1.02 g/g.

Conclusions

The metabolically-engineered strains showed an efficient succinate production using glycerol as sole carbon source under O2 deprivation.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the 973 Program of China (Grant No. 2011CB707405).

Supporting information

Supplementary Table 1—Strains and plasmids used in this study.

Supplementary Table 2—Oligonucleotides used in this study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China

    Chen Wang, Heng Cai & Zhihui Zhou

  2. College of Food Science and Engineering, Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot, People’s Republic of China

    Zhongjun Chen

Authors
  1. Chen Wang
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  2. Heng Cai
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  3. Zhongjun Chen
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  4. Zhihui Zhou
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Heng Cai.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Wang, C., Cai, H., Chen, Z. et al. Engineering a glycerol utilization pathway in Corynebacterium glutamicum for succinate production under O2 deprivation. Biotechnol Lett 38, 1791–1797 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-016-2166-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-016-2166-4

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