Metabolic engineering for isoprenoids production in Escherichia coli

Isopentenyl diphosphate (IPP) is the common, five-carbon building block in the biosynthesis of all isoprenoids. IPP in Escherichia coli is synthesized through the non-mevalonate pathway. The first reaction of IPP biosynthesis in E. coli is the formation of 1-deoxy-D-xylulose-5-phosphate(DXP), catalyzed by DXP synthase and encoded by dxs. The second reaction in the pathway is the reduction of DXP to 2-C-methyl-D-erythritol-4-phosphate, catalyzed by DXP reductoismerase and encoded by dxr. To determine if one of more of the reactions in the non-mevalonate pathway controlled flux to IPP, dxs and dxr were placed on several expression vectors under the control of three different promoters and transformed into three E. coli strains ($DH5{\alpha}$, XL1-Blue, and JM101) that had been engineered to produce lycopene, a kind of isoprenoids. Lycopene production was improved significantly in strains transformed with the dex expression vectors. At arabinose concentrations between 0 and 1.33 mM, cells expressiong both dxs and from $P_{BAD}$ on a midium-copy plasmid produced 1.4 -2.0 times more lycopene than cells expressing dxs only. However, at higher arabinose concentrations lycopene production in cell expressing both dxs and dxr was lower than in cells expression dxs only. A comparison of the three E. coli strains trasfomed with the arabinose-inducible dxs on a medium-copy plasmid revealed that lycopene production was highest in XL1-Blue.