Multisite Mutation of the Escherichia coli cAMP Receptor Protein: Enhancing Xylitol Biosynthesis by Activating Xylose Catabolism and Improving Strain Tolerance

The bioproduction of xylitol from hemicellulose hydrolysate has good potential for industrial development. However, xylitol productivity has always been limited due to corncob hydrolysate toxicity and glucose catabolic repression. To address these challenges, this work selected the S83 and S128 amino acid residues of the cyclic AMP receptor protein (CRP) as the modification target. By introducing multisite mutation in CRP, this approach successfully enhanced xylose catabolism and improved the strain’s tolerance to corncob hydrolysate. The resulting mutant strain, designated as CPH (CRP S83H-S128P), underwent fermentation in a 20 L bioreactor with semicontinuous feeding of corncob hydrolysate. Remarkably, xylitol yield and xylitol productivity for 41 h fermentation were 175 and 4.32 g/L/h, respectively. Therefore, multisite CRP mutation was demonstrated as an efficient global regulatory strategy to effectively improve xylitol productivity from lime-pretreated corncob hydrolysates.