Engineering Escherichia coli co‐cultures for production of curcuminoids from glucose
Curcuminoids have attracted increasing attention because of the antioxidant, anticancer, and antitumor activities while their production is limited because of its main source, turmeric plant, demonstrates extensive seasonal variation. In this study, we constructed Escherichia coli co‐culture system for the rapid production of curcuminoids from glucose. Firstly, the overexpression of curcuminoid synthase and four different strategies related to increasing the intracellular malonyl‐CoA pool were conducted in engineered E. coli. We found that bisdemethoxycurcumin (BDMC) was the main product and that high level of malonyl‐CoA pool was essential for BDMC production. We also obtained the maximum titer (13.8 mg/L) of BDMC within 4 hours by fast preparation directly from p‐coumaric acid. Secondly, we developed a process for BDMC synthesis from glucose using a co‐culture system where an E. coli strain was used to produce p‐coumaric acid from glucose and another E. coli strain converted p‐coumaric acid into the final product. Compared to the mono‐culture system, the co‐culture was more potent and resulted in 6.28 mg/L of BDMC from glucose within 22 hours of fermentation in a 3‐L bioreactor. This is the first time a co‐culture method was employed for the production of curcuminoids from glucose in a lab scale bioreactor. This system provides a new method transforming inexpensive substrate into value‐added products.
Original Article: Engineering Escherichia coli co‐cultures for production of curcuminoids from glucose
