Engineering Escherichia coli for fumaric acid production from glycerol

The evolved mutant Escherichia coli E2 previously developed for succinate production from glycerol was engineered in this study for fumaric acid production under aerobic conditions. Through deletion of three fumarases, 3.65 g/L fumaric acid was produced with the yield of 0.25 mol/mol glycerol and a large amount of acetate was accumulated as the main byproduct. In order to reduce acetate production several strategies were attempted, among which increasing the flux of the anaplerotic pathways through overexpression of phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase gene ppc or the glyoxylate shunt operon aceBA effectively reduced acetate and improved fumaric acid production. In fed-batch culture, the resulting strain EF02(pSCppc) produced 41.5 g/L fumaric acid from glycerol with 70% of the maximum theoretical yield and an overall productivity of 0.51 g/L/h.