Metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli BW25113 for the production of 5-Aminolevulinic Acid based on CRISPR/Cas9 mediated gene knockout and metabolic pathway modification

BACKGROUND: 5-Aminolevulinic acid (ALA) recently received much attention due to its potential application in many fields. In this study, an ALA production strain of Escherichia coli was constructed by rational metabolic engineering and stepwise improvement based on known regulatory and metabolic information and CRISPR/Cas9 mediated gene knockout. RESULTS: A metabolic strategy to produce ALA directly from glucose in this recombinant E. coli via the C5 pathway was applied herein. The rational metabolic engineering by gene knockouts significantly improved ALA production from 662.3 to 1601.7 mg/L. In addition, we managed to synergistically produce ALA via the C4 pathway in recombinant strain. The expression of a modified hemA gene, encoding an ALA synthase from Rhodobacter sphaeroides, improved ALA production from 1601.7 to 2099.7 mg/L. After 24 h cultivation, a yield of 0.210 g ALA per g glucose was achieved by constructed E. coli D5:FYABD-RSA. CONCLUSION: Our study revealed that an industrially competitive strain can be efficiently developed by metabolic engineering based on combined rational modification and optimization of gene expression. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13036-022-00307-7.