Engineering a Phosphoketolase Pathway to Supplement Cytosolic Acetyl-CoA in Aspergillus niger Enables a Significant Increase in Citric Acid Production

Citric acid is widely used in the food, chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Aspergillus niger is the workhorse used for citric acid production in industry. A canonical citrate biosynthesis that occurred in mitochondria was well established; however, some research suggested that the cytosolic citrate biosynthesis pathway may play a role in this chemical production. Here, the roles of cytosolic phosphoketolase (PK), acetate kinase (ACK) and acetyl-CoA synthetase (ACS) in citrate biosynthesis were investigated by gene deletion and complementation in A. niger. The results indicated that PK, ACK and ACS were important for cytosolic acetyl-CoA accumulation and had significant effects on citric acid biosynthesis. Subsequently, the functions of variant PKs and phosphotransacetylase (PTA) were evaluated, and their efficiencies were determined. Finally, an efficient PK-PTA pathway was reconstructed in A. niger S469 with Ca-PK from Clostridium acetobutylicum and Ts-PTA from Thermoanaerobacterium saccharolyticum. The resultant strain showed an increase of 96.4% and 88% in the citrate titer and yield, respectively, compared with the parent strain in the bioreactor fermentation. These findings indicate that the cytosolic citrate biosynthesis pathway is important for citric acid biosynthesis, and increasing the cytosolic acetyl-CoA level can significantly enhance citric acid production.