Genome engineering Escherichia coli for L-DOPA overproduction from glucose

Genome engineering has become a powerful tool for creating useful strains in research and industry. In this study, we applied singleplex and multiplex genome engineering approaches to construct an E. coli strain for the production of L-DOPA from glucose. We first used the singleplex genome engineering approach to create an L-DOPA-producing strain, E. coli DOPA-1, by deleting transcriptional regulators (tyrosine repressor tyrR and carbon storage regulator A csrA), altering glucose transport from the phosphotransferase system (PTS) to ATP-dependent uptake and the phosphorylation system overexpressing galactose permease gene (galP) and glucokinase gene (glk), knocking out glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase gene (zwf) and prephenate dehydratase and its leader peptide genes (pheLA) and integrating the fusion protein chimera of the downstream pathway of chorismate. Then, multiplex automated genome engineering (MAGE) based on 23 targets was used to further improve L-DOPA production. The resulting strain, E. coli DOPA-30N, produced 8.67 g/L of L-DOPA in 60 h in a 5 L fed-batch fermentation. This titer is the highest achieved in metabolically engineered E. coli having PHAH activity from glucose.