Reassembled Biosynthetic Pathway for a Large-scale Synthesis of CMP-Neu5Ac

CMP-Neu5Ac is an important sugar nucleotide for biosynthesis of sialic acid and its conjugates. In this paper, a large-scale production system of CMP-Neu5Ac by a single strain is reported. The co-expression of Neu5Ac aldolase (EC4.1.3.3) and CMP-Neu5Ac synthetase (EC 2.7.7.43) was achieved by constructing individual genes into one plasmid and having a single culture that has both NeuAc aldolase and CMP-Neu5Ac synthetase activities. Overall this system only employed N-acetylmannosamine, excess of pyruvate and CTP to produce CMP-Neu5Ac. This work has demonstrated that a large-scale synthesis of sialic acid-derived oligosaccharides could be achieved economically and efficiently through a single, biosynthetic pathway engineered microorganism.