13C-metabolic flux analysis in heterologous cellulase production by Bacillus subtilis genome-reduced strain

The great potential of Bacillus subtilis to produce biomaterials would be further enhanced by the development of strains with deletions of non-essential genomic regions. Here, using stationary 13C-metabolic flux analysis (13C-MFA), we investigated the metabolism during cellulase production by the genome-reduced B. subtilis strain MGB874. We transformed MGB874 and wild-type strains with the heterologous cellulase gene, and cultured these on a synthetic medium containing glucose as carbon source. The addition of glutamate and the genome reduction enhanced cellulase production, which led us to use 13C-MFA to assess the effects of glutamate addition and gene deletions on metabolism. We found that there was a significant increase in the flux in the pentose phosphate (PP) pathway, whereas the fluxes of reactions from acetyl-CoA to α-ketoglutarate were repressed in the presence of glutamate. We hypothesize that the increase in the PP pathway flux was caused by the decrease of citrate synthase flux through the accumulation of glycolytic intermediates. Excess NADPH produced by the PP pathway may affect the increase in cellulase production. Furthermore, the fluxes on glycolysis and the acetate formation of the cellulase-producing wild-type strain were significantly larger than that of the cellulase-producing MGB874 strain when the strains were cultured with glucose and glutamate.