Fmoc-3-(4-thiazolyl)-L-alanine

Biofuel offers a promising solution to the adverse environmental problems and depletion in reserves of fossil fuels. Higher alcohols including 3-methyl-1-butanol were paid much more attention as fuel substitute in recent years, due to its similar properties to gasoline. In the present work, 3-methyl-1-butanol production in engineered Corynebacterium glutamicum was studied. α-Ketoisovalerate decarboxylase gene (kivd) from Lactococcus lactis combined with alcohol dehydrogenase gene (adh2, adhA, and adh3) from three organisms were overexpressed in C. glutamicum. Enzymatic assay and alcohol production results showed that adh3 from Zymomonas mobilis was the optimum candidate for 3-methyl-1-butanol production in C. glutamicum. The recombinant with kivd and adh3 could produce 0.182 g/L of 3-methyl-1-butanol and 0.144 g/L of isobutanol after 12 h of incubation. Further inactivation of the E1 subunit of pyruvate dehydrogenase complex gene (aceE) and lactic dehydrogenase gene (ldh) in the above C. glutamicum strain would improve the 3-Methyl-1-butanol titer to 0.497 g/L after 12 h of incubation.

The production of isobutanol in microorganisms has recently been achieved by harnessing the highly active 2-keto acid pathways. Since these 2-keto acids are precursors of amino acids, we aimed to construct an isobutanol production platform in Corynebacterium glutamicum, a well-known amino-acid-producing microorganism. Analysis of this host's sensitivity to isobutanol toxicity revealed that C. glutamicum shows an increased tolerance to isobutanol relative to Escherichia coli. Overexpression of alsS of Bacillus subtilis, ilvC and ilvD of C. glutamicum, kivd of Lactococcus lactis, and a native alcohol dehydrogenase, adhA, led to the production of 2.6 g/L isobutanol and 0.4 g/L 3-methyl-1-butanol in 48 h. In addition, other higher chain alcohols such as 1-propanol, 2-methyl-1-butanol, 1-butanol, and 2-phenylethanol were also detected as byproducts. Using longer-term batch cultures, isobutanol titers reached 4.0 g/L after 96 h with wild-type C. glutamicum as a host. Upon the inactivation of several genes to direct more carbon through the isobutanol pathway, we increased production by approximately 25% to 4.9 g/L isobutanol in a pycldh background. These results show promise in engineering C. glutamicum for higher chain alcohol production using the 2-keto acid pathways.

In the present work, Bacillus subtilis was engineered as the cell factory for isobutanol production due to its high tolerance to isobutanol. Initially, an efficient heterologous Ehrlich pathway controlled by the promoter P(43) was introduced into B. subtilis for the isobutanol biosynthesis. Further, investigation of acetolactate synthase of B. subtilis, ketol-acid reductoisomerase, and dihydroxy-acid dehydratase of Corynebacterium glutamicum responsible for 2-ketoisovalerate precursor biosynthesis showed that acetolactate synthase played an important role in isobutanol biosynthesis. The overexpression of acetolactate synthase led to a 2.8-fold isobutanol production compared with the control. Apart from isobutanol, alcoholic profile analysis also confirmed the existence of 1.21 g/L ethanol, 1.06 g/L 2-phenylethanol, as well as traces of 2-methyl-1-butanol and 3-methyl-1-butanol in the fermentation broth. Under microaerobic condition, the engineered B. subtilis produced up to 2.62 g/L isobutanol in shake-flask fed-batch fermentation, which was 21.3% higher than that in batch fermentation.