Optimum flux rerouting for efficient production of naringenin from acetate in engineered Escherichia coli

BACKGROUND: Microbial production of naringenin has received much attention owing to its pharmaceutical applicability and potential as a key molecular scaffold for various flavonoids. In the microbial fermentation, a cheap and abundant feedstock is required to achieve an economically feasible bioprocess. From this perspective, utilizing acetate for naringenin production could be an effective strategy, with the advantages of both low-cost and abundant feedstock. For the efficient production of naringenin using acetate, identification of the appropriate regulatory node of carbon flux in the biosynthesis of naringenin from acetate would be important. While acetyl-CoA is a key precursor for naringenin production, carbon flux between the TCA cycle and anaplerosis is effectively regulated at the isocitrate node through glyoxylate shunt in acetate metabolism. Accordingly, appropriate rerouting of TCA cycle intermediates from anaplerosis into naringenin biosynthesis via acetyl-CoA replenishment would be required. RESULTS: This study identified the isocitrate and oxaloacetate (OAA) nodes as key regulatory nodes for the naringenin production using acetate. Precise rerouting at the OAA node for enhanced acetyl-CoA was conducted, avoiding extensive loss of OAA by fine-tuning the expression of pckA (encoding phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase) with flux redistribution between naringenin biosynthesis and cell growth at the isocitrate node. Consequently, the flux-optimized strain exhibited a significant increase in naringenin production, a 27.2-fold increase (with a 38.3-fold increase of naringenin yield on acetate) over that by the unoptimized strain, producing 97.02 mg/L naringenin with 21.02 mg naringenin/g acetate, which is a competitive result against those in previous studies on conventional substrates, such as glucose. CONCLUSIONS: Collectively, we demonstrated efficient flux rerouting for maximum naringenin production from acetate in E. coli. This study was the first attempt of naringenin production from acetate and suggested the potential of biosynthesis of various flavonoids derived from naringenin using acetate. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13068-022-02188-w.