Improving citric acid production of an industrial Aspergillus niger CGMCC 10142: identification and overexpression of a high-affinity glucose transporter with different promoters

BACKGROUND: Glucose transporters play an important role in the fermentation of citric acid. In this study, a high-affinity glucose transporter (HGT1) was identified and overexpressed in the industrial strain A. niger CGMCC 10142. HGT1-overexpressing strains using the PglaA and Paox1 promoters were constructed to verify the glucose transporter functions. RESULT: As hypothesized, the HGT1-overexpressing strains showed higher citric acid production and lower residual sugar contents. The best-performing strain A. niger 20-15 exhibited a reduction of the total sugar content and residual reducing sugars by 16.5 and 44.7%, while the final citric acid production was significantly increased to 174.1 g/L, representing a 7.3% increase compared to A. niger CGMCC 10142. Measurement of the mRNA expression levels of relevant genes at different time-points during the fermentation indicated that in addition to HGT1, citrate synthase and glucokinase were also expressed at higher levels in the overexpression strains. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that HGT1 overexpression resolved the metabolic bottleneck caused by insufficient sugar transport and thereby improved the sugar utilization rate. This study demonstrates the usefulness of the high-affinity glucose transporter HGT1 for improving the citric acid fermentation process of Aspergillus niger CGMCC 10142. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12934-021-01659-3.