The new mechanism increases the yield of terpenes synthesized by biological method

Terpenes are widely used in food, medicine, cosmetics, perfume, health protection and other industries. In recent years, the hydrogenation products have attracted more and more attention because of their potential application value in the field of biofuels. Recently, the fine Chemicals Research Group of bio-based materials group, Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Processes, Chinese Academy of Sciences has made progress in this field, and the related results have been published in Biofuel Technology.

The research group has been engaged in the research of biosynthesis of terpenes for a long time, and has made a series of important progress in the biosynthesis of pinene, pinene, pinolene and other compounds.

The researchers used genome resequencing, transcriptome sequencing and reverse engineering to uncover key pathways and genes associated with increased tolerance. For the first time, three genes associated with e. coli resistance to juniper were identified: ybcK, ygiZ, and scpA. The research strategy and results of this work provide an important reference for the biosynthesis of other terpenes.

Traditional production methods of terpenes are extraction or chemical synthesis from natural plants, but these two methods have some problems, such as low yield, high energy consumption, complex operation process and easy pollution. With the development of synthetic biology and the urgent need to develop green energy, the use of engineered microorganisms and renewable sugars to produce terpenes has become a new research hotspot.

The yield of terpenes synthesized by biological method is mainly affected by two factors: the expression of genes in the synthetic pathway and the host’s tolerance to the products. Most of the previous studies only focused on the modification of genes in the synthetic pathway, but relatively few studies on the tolerance of host cell products. Aiming at these problems, the researchers first gradually improve medium concentration of exogenous juniper ene to directional domestication of the host cell, resistant to high concentrations of juniper ene of domesticated strains of e. coli, using the strain as a host of synthetic juniper, its output is 191.76 mg/L, was 8.43 times of domesticated strains, for e. coli known synthetic juniper olefine yields the highest reported.

The work was supported by the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Talent Program of Shandong Province, the Key RESEARCH and Development Plan of Hainan Province and the fusion Fund of the two institutes.