Original Research ArticleMetabolic flexibility of a butyrate pathway mutant of Clostridium acetobutylicum

•buk-ptb deletion resulted in the highest butanol yield ever reported for C. acetobutylicum..•In ΔbukΔptb, the primary metabolite was butanol in acidogenesis.•In ΔbukΔptb, the primary metabolite was lactate in alcohologenesis.•The presence of the pathway to 2-hydroxy-valerate in C. acetobutylicum is proposed.•High expressions of adhE2 were observed in all metabolic states in the mutant.

Clostridium acetobutylicum possesses two homologous buk genes, buk (or buk1) and buk2, which encode butyrate kinases involved in the last step of butyrate formation. To investigate the contribution of buk in detail, an in-frame deletion mutant was constructed. However, in all the Δbuk mutants obtained, partial deletions of the upstream ptb gene were observed, and low phosphotransbutyrylase and butyrate kinase activities were measured. This demonstrates that i) buk (CA_C3075) is the key butyrate kinase-encoding gene and that buk2 (CA_C1660) that is poorly transcribed only plays a minor role; and ii) strongly suggests that a Δbuk mutant is not viable if the ptb gene is not also inactivated, probably due to the accumulation of butyryl-phosphate, which might be toxic for the cell.One of the ΔbukΔptb mutants was subjected to quantitative transcriptomic (mRNA molecules/cell) and fluxomic analyses in acidogenic, solventogenic and alcohologenic chemostat cultures. In addition to the low butyrate production, drastic changes in metabolic fluxes were also observed for the mutant: i) under acidogenic conditions, the primary metabolite was butanol and a new metabolite, 2-hydroxy-valerate, was produced ii) under solventogenesis, 58% increased butanol production was obtained compared to the control strain under the same conditions, and a very high yield of butanol formation (0.3 g g−1) was reached; and iii) under alcohologenesis, the major product was lactate. Furthermore, at the transcriptional level, adhE2, which encodes an aldehyde/alcohol dehydrogenase and is known to be a gene specifically expressed in alcohologenesis, was surprisingly highly expressed in all metabolic states in the mutant.The results presented here not only support the key roles of buk and ptb in butyrate formation but also highlight the metabolic flexibility of C. acetobutylicum in response to genetic alteration of its primary metabolism.