Dataset Information

Production of 10-methyl branched fatty acids in yeast.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Despite the environmental value of biobased lubricants, they account for less than 2% of global lubricant use due to poor thermo-oxidative stability arising from the presence of unsaturated double bonds. Methyl branched fatty acids (BFAs), particularly those with branching near the acyl-chain mid-point, are a high-performance alternative to existing vegetable oils because of their low melting temperature and full saturation.

Results

We cloned and characterized two pathways to produce 10-methyl BFAs isolated from actinomycetes and ?-proteobacteria. In the two-step bfa pathway of actinomycetes, BfaB methylates ?9 unsaturated fatty acids to form 10-methylene BFAs, and subsequently, BfaA reduces the double bond to produce a fully saturated 10-methyl branched fatty acid. A BfaA-B fusion enzyme increased the conversion efficiency of 10-methyl BFAs. The ten-methyl palmitate production (tmp) pathway of ?-proteobacteria produces a 10-methylene intermediate, but the TmpA putative reductase was not active in E. coli or yeast. Comparison of BfaB and TmpB activities revealed a range of substrate specificities from C14-C20 fatty acids unsaturated at the ?9, ?10 or ?11 position. We demonstrated efficient production of 10-methylene and 10-methyl BFAs in S. cerevisiae by secretion of free fatty acids and in Y. lipolytica as triacylglycerides, which accumulated to levels more than 35% of total cellular fatty acids.

Conclusions

We report here the characterization of a set of enzymes that can produce position-specific methylene and methyl branched fatty acids. Yeast expression of bfa enzymes can provide a platform for the large-scale production of branched fatty acids suitable for industrial and consumer applications.

SUBMITTER: Blitzblau HG

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7791843 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Production of 10-methyl branched fatty acids in yeast.

Blitzblau Hannah G HG Consiglio Andrew L AL Teixeira Paulo P Crabtree Donald V DV Chen Shuyan S Konzock Oliver O Chifamba Gamuchirai G Su Austin A Kamineni Annapurna A MacEwen Kyle K Hamilton Maureen M Tsakraklides Vasiliki V Nielsen Jens J Siewers Verena V Shaw A Joe AJ

Biotechnology for biofuels 20210107 1

<h4>Background</h4>Despite the environmental value of biobased lubricants, they account for less than 2% of global lubricant use due to poor thermo-oxidative stability arising from the presence of unsaturated double bonds. Methyl branched fatty acids (BFAs), particularly those with branching near the acyl-chain mid-point, are a high-performance alternative to existing vegetable oils because of their low melting temperature and full saturation.<h4>Results</h4>We cloned and characterized two pathw ...[more]

PMID: 33413611

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundA broad diversity of natural and non-natural esters have now been made in bacteria, and in other microorganisms, as a result of original metabolic engineering approaches. However, the fact that the properties of these molecules, and therefore their applications, are largely defined by the structural features of the fatty acid and alcohol moieties, has driven a persistent interest in generating novel structures of these chemicals.ResultsIn this research, we engineered Escherichia coli to synthesize de novo esters composed of multi-methyl-branched-chain fatty acids and short branched-chain alcohols (BCA), from glucose and propionate. A coculture engineering strategy was developed to avoid metabolic burden generated by the reconstitution of long heterologous biosynthetic pathways. The cocultures were composed of two independently optimized E. coli strains, one dedicated to efficiently achieve the biosynthesis and release of the BCA, and the other to synthesize the multi methyl-branched fatty acid and the corresponding multi-methyl-branched esters (MBE) as the final products. Response surface methodology, a cost-efficient multivariate statistical technique, was used to empirical model the BCA-derived MBE production landscape of the coculture and to optimize its productivity. Compared with the monoculture strategy, the utilization of the designed coculture improved the BCA-derived MBE production in 45%. Finally, the coculture was scaled up in a high-cell density fed-batch fermentation in a 2 L bioreactor by fine-tuning the inoculation ratio between the two engineered E. coli strains.ConclusionPrevious work revealed that esters containing multiple methyl branches in their molecule present favorable physicochemical properties which are superior to those of linear esters. Here, we have successfully engineered an E. coli strain to broaden the diversity of these molecules by incorporating methyl branches also in the alcohol moiety. The limited production of these esters by a monoculture was considerable improved by a design of a coculture system and its optimization using response surface methodology. The possibility to scale-up this process was confirmed in high-cell density fed-batch fermentations.

Dataset Information

Production of 10-methyl branched fatty acids in yeast.

Background

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Production of 10-methyl branched fatty acids in yeast.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure