1 research outputs found
Designing a New Entry Point into Isoprenoid Metabolism by Exploiting Fructose-6-Phosphate Aldolase Side Reactivity of <i>Escherichia coli</i>
The
2C-methyl-d-erythritol-4-phosphate (MEP) pathway in <i>Escherichia coli</i> has been highlighted for its potential
to provide access to myriad isoprenoid chemicals of industrial and
therapeutic relevance and discover antibiotic targets to treat microbial
human pathogens. Here, we describe a metabolic engineering strategy
for the <i>de novo</i> construction of a biosynthetic pathway
that produces 1-dexoxy-d-xylulose-5-phosphate (DXP), the
precursor metabolite of the MEP pathway, from the simple and renewable
starting materials d-arabinose and hydroxyacetone. Unlike
most metabolic engineering efforts in which cell metabolism is reprogrammed
with enzymes that are highly specific to their desired reaction, we
highlight the promiscuous activity of the native <i>E. coli</i> fructose-6-phosphate aldolase as central to the metabolic rerouting
of carbon to DXP. We use mass spectrometric isotopomer analysis of
intracellular metabolites to show that the engineered pathway is able
to support <i>in vivo</i> DXP biosynthesis in <i>E.
coli</i>. The engineered DXP synthesis is further able to rescue
cells that were chemically inhibited in their ability to produce DXP
and to increase terpene titers in strains harboring the non-native
lycopene pathway. In addition to providing an alternative metabolic
pathway to produce isoprenoids, the results here highlight the potential
role of pathway evolution to circumvent metabolic inhibitors in the
development of microbial antibiotic resistance