Impairment of NADH dehydrogenase for increased hydrogen production and its effect on metabolic flux redistribution in wild strain and mutants of Enterobacter aerogenes

An NADH dehydrogenase encoded by the nuo cluster was isolated and impaired by knocking out the nuoB gene in Enterobacter aerogenes to examine its effect on hydrogen production. Three nuoB-deleted mutant strains were constructed from the wild-type strain E. aerogenes IAM1183 and two recombinant strains, IAM1183-A (ΔhycA) and IAM1183-O (ΔhybO), from which the hycA and hybO genes had already been deleted previously, respectively. Compared with the performance of the wild-type strain, the overall hydrogen production of the mutants IAM1183-B (ΔnuoB), IAM1183-AB (ΔhycA/ΔnuoB) and IAM1183-BO (ΔhybO/ΔnuoB) was increased by 49.2%, 54.0%, and 52.4% in batch culture, respectively. The hydrogen yields from glucose by the three mutants IAM1183-B, IAM1183-AB, IAM1183-BO were 1.38, 1.49, and 1.39 mol H2/mol glucose, respectively, while it was 1.16 mol H2/mol glucose in the wild-type strain. Metabolic flux analysis indicated that all three mutants exhibited reduced fluxes to lactate production, and enhanced fluxes toward the generation of hydrogen, acetate, ethanol, succinate and 2,3-butanediol. Both the formate pathway and the NADH pathway contributed to increased hydrogen production in the mutant strains. The assay of 4 NADH-mediated enzyme activities (H2ase, LDH, ADH and BDDH) was in accordance with the redistributions of the metabolic fluxes in the mutant strains.

► An NADH dehydrogenase encoded by the nuo cluster was isolated in Enterobacter aerogenes.
► Deleting the nuoB gene resulted in a substantial increase in hydrogen production.
►  Reduced fluxes to lactate were found in all three nuoB-deleted mutant strains.
►  Changes in NADH-mediated enzyme activities agreed with metabolic redistributions.