Efficient acetoin production from pyruvate by engineered Halomonas bluephagenesis whole-cell biocatalysis

Abstract

Acetoin is an important platform chemical, which has a wide range of applications in many industries. Halomonas bluephagenesis, a chassis for next generation of industrial biotechnology, has advantages of fast growth and high tolerance to organic acid salts and alkaline environment. Here, α-acetolactate synthase and α-acetolactate decarboxylase from Bacillus subtilis 168 were co-expressed in H. bluephagenesis to produce acetoin from pyruvate. After reaction condition optimization and further increase of α-acetolactate decarboxylase expression, acetoin production and yield were significantly enhanced to 223.4 mmol·L^–1 and 0.491 mol·mol^–1 from 125.4 mmol·L^–1 and 0.333 mol·mol^–1, respectively. Finally, the highest titer of 974.3 mmol·L^–1 (85.84 g·L^–1) of acetoin was accumulated from 2143.4 mmol·L^–1 (188.6 g·L^–1) of pyruvic acid within 8 h in fed-batch bioconversion under optimal reaction conditions. Moreover, the reusability of the cell catalysis was also tested, and the result illustrated that the whole-cell catalysis obtained 433.3, 440.2, 379.0, 442.8 and 339.4 mmol·L^–1 (38.2, 38.8, 33.4, 39.0 and 29.9 g·L^–1) acetoin in five repeated cycles under the same conditions. This work therefore provided an efficient H. bluephagenesis whole-cell catalysis with a broad development prospect in biosynthesis of acetoin.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

acetoin / pyruvate / α-acetolactate synthetase / α-acetolactate decarboxylase / Halomonas bluephagenesis / whole-cell biocatalysis

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2018YFA0900200) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. NSFC-21621004). We thank Prof. Guo-Qiang Chen from Tsinghua University for generously providing experimental materials.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11705-022-2229-0 and is accessible for authorized users.

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