Aerobic production of succinate from arabinose by metabolically engineered Corynebacterium glutamicum

Arabinose is considered as an ideal feedstock for the microbial production of value-added chemicals due to its abundance in hemicellulosic wastes. In this study, the araBAD operon from Escherichia coli was introduced into succinate-producing Corynebacterium glutamicum, which enabled aerobic production of succinate using arabinose as sole carbon source. The engineered strain ZX1 (pXaraBAD, pEacsAgltA) produced 74.4 mM succinate with a yield of 0.58 mol (mol arabinose)−1, which represented 69.9% of the theoretically maximal yield. Moreover, this strain produced 110.2 mM succinate using combined substrates of glucose and arabinose. To date, this is the highest succinate production under aerobic conditions in minimal medium.