High production of fatty alcohols in Escherichia coli with fatty acid starvation

BACKGROUND: Microbial biofuel synthesis attracting increasing attention. Great advances have been made in producing fatty alcohols from fatty acyl-CoAs and fatty acids in Escherichia coli. However, the low titers and limited knowledge regarding the basic characteristics of fatty alcohols, such as location and toxicity, have hampered large-scale industrialization. Further research is still needed. RESULTS: In this study, we designed a novel and efficient strategy to enhance fatty alcohol production by inducing fatty acid starvation. We report the first use of deletions of acyl-ACP thioesterases to enhance fatty alcohol production. Transcriptional analysis was conducted to investigate the mechanism of the designed strategy. Then, fatty alcohol production was further enhanced by deletion of genes from competing pathways. Fatty alcohols were shown to be extracellular products with low toxicity. The final strain, E. coli MGL2, produced fatty alcohols at the remarkable level of 6.33 g/L under fed-batch fermentation, representing the highest reported titer of fatty alcohols produced by microorganisms. CONCLUSIONS: Deletions of genes responsible for synthesis of fatty acids and competing products are promising strategies for fatty alcohol production. Our investigation of the location and toxicity of fatty alcohols suggest bright future for fatty alcohol production in E. coli. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12934-016-0524-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.