Fine tuning the glycolytic flux ratio of EP-bifido pathway for mevalonate production by enhancing glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (Zwf) and CRISPRi suppressing 6-phosphofructose kinase (PfkA) in Escherichia coli

BACKGROUND: Natural glycolysis encounters the decarboxylation of glucose partial oxidation product pyruvate into acetyl-CoA, where one-third of the carbon is lost at CO(2). We previously constructed a carbon saving pathway, EP-bifido pathway by combining Embden-Meyerhof-Parnas Pathway, Pentose Phosphate Pathway and “bifid shunt”, to generate high yield acetyl-CoA from glucose. However, the carbon conversion rate and reducing power of this pathway was not optimal, the flux ratio of EMP pathway and pentose phosphate pathway (PPP) needs to be precisely and dynamically adjusted to improve the production of mevalonate (MVA). RESULT: Here, we finely tuned the glycolytic flux ratio in two ways. First, we enhanced PPP flux for NADPH supply by replacing the promoter of zwf on the genome with a set of different strength promoters. Compared with the previous EP-bifido strains, the zwf-modified strains showed obvious differences in NADPH, NADH, and ATP synthesis levels. Among them, strain BP10BF accumulated 11.2 g/L of MVA after 72 h of fermentation and the molar conversion rate from glucose reached 62.2%. Second, pfkA was finely down-regulated by the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats interference (CRISPRi) system. The MVA yield of the regulated strain BiB1F was 8.53 g/L, and the conversion rate from glucose reached 68.7%. CONCLUSION: This is the highest MVA conversion rate reported in shaken flask fermentation. The CRISPRi and promoter fine-tuning provided an effective strategy for metabolic flux redistribution in many metabolic pathways and promotes the chemicals production.