Metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli for d-pantothenic acid production

Escherichia coli was engineered to produce d-pantothenic acid via systematic metabolic engineering. Firstly, genes of acetohydroxy acid synthase II, pantothenate synthetase, 3-methyl-2-oxobutanoate hydroxymethyltransferase, 2-dehydropantoate 2-reductase and ketol-acid reductoisomerase were edited in E. coli W3110 with a resulting d-pantothenic acid yield of 0.49 g/L. Expressions of valine-pyruvate aminotransferase and branched-chain-amino-acid aminotransferase were then attenuated to decrease the carbon flux in l-valine biosynthetic pathway which is a competing pathway to the d-pantothenic acid biosynthetic pathway, and the yield increased to 1.48 g/L. Mutagenesis of pantothenate kinase and deletion of threonine deaminase further increased the production to 1.78 g/L. Overexpressions of panC and panB from Corynebacterium glutamicum enhanced the production by 29%. In fed-batch fermentations, strain DPA-9/pTrc99a-panBC(C.G) exhibited a highest d-pantothenic acid yield of 28.45 g/L. The findings in this study demonstrate the systematic metabolic engineering in Escherichia coli W3110 would be a promising strategy for industrial production of d-pantothenic acid.