De novo biosynthesis of 2-phenylacetamide in engineered Escherichia coli

2-Phenylacetamide is an important bulk chemical. The industrial production of 2-phenylacetamide is mainly dependent on the chemical oxidation of styrene, which comes from petrochemical resources. The establishment of a microbial cell factory for the production of 2-phenylacetamide from renewable sugars can reduce the dependence on petrochemical resources. In this study, we designed and constructed for the first time a biosynthetic pathway in engineered E. coli MG1655 for production of 2-phenylacetamide from glucose. We further increased the 2-phenylacetamide production to 487 mg/L by the increasing availability of erythrose-4-phosphate and phosphoenolpyruvate. Finally, we increased the production of 2-phenylacetamide to 561 mg/L by further overexpression of aroK and ydiB. The engineered E. coli in this study thus represents a potentially useful initial strain for the further development aimed at the biosynthesis of 2-phenylacetamide derivatives.