Short communicationA novel synthetic pathway for glutarate production in recombinant Escherichia coli

•A novel synthetic pathway for glutarate production was constructed in Escherichia coli.•A biochemical gap from trans-glutaconyl-CoA to glutarate was filled with trans-enoyl-CoA reductases (Ter).•Glutarate production was enhanced by employing a Ter mutant (I287V) from Treponema denticola.

Glutarate is an important C5 linear chain dicarboxylic acid having wide applications in chemical industry. In this work we report glutarate production by Escherichia coli with a newly constructed biosynthetic pathway containing part of known glutaconate biosynthetic pathway and a gap-filling module employing trans-enoyl-CoA reductase (Ter). Overall the artificial pathway comprises reduction of the central carbon metabolite α-ketoglutarate to 2-hydroxyglutarate, activation to 2-hydroxyglutaryl-CoA, dehydration to trans-glutaconyl-CoA, hydrogenation to glutaryl-CoA by Ter and thioester hydrolysis to finally yield glutarate. The pathway introduced into E. coli resulted in a recombinant strain that produced 3.8 mg/L of glutarate together with 27.7 mg/L of glutaconate in anaerobic culture mode. The glutarate production increased by approximately 50% through the mutation of Ter from Treponema denticola. The results demonstrated biosynthesis of glutarate via a non-natural synthetic pathway, which may enable its biobased production from renewable resources.

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