Engineering Eschericha coli for Enhanced Tyrosol Production

Tyrosol is a phenolic compound found in olive oil and wines. The health benefits of tyrosol have attracted considerable attention. Because the tyrosol extraction from plants poses a major obstacle, biosynthesizing this compound using microbial hosts is of interest. In this study, the phenylpyruvate decarboxylase gene ARO10 and the aromatic amino acid aminotransferase gene ARO8 were introduced into Escherichia coli to generate two recombinant tyrosol producers. Deleting the prephenate dehydratase gene pheA and the phenylacetaldehyde dehydrogenase gene feaB improved the tyrosol production. Under the optimal fermentation conditions, a recombinant strain overexpressing ARO10 gene produced 4.15 mM tyrosol from 1% (w/v) glucose during a 48 h shake flask cultivation. Furthermore, when tyrosine was used as the substrate, the recombinant strain co-overexpressing ARO8 and ARO10 genes displayed a higher tyrosol yield, in which 8.71 mM tyrosol was produced from 10 mM tyrosine. This investigation suggests that microbial tyrosol production has application potential.