Development of Fatty Acid-Producing Corynebacterium glutamicum Strains
ABSTRACTTo date, no information has been made available on the genetic traits that lead to increased carbon flow into the fatty acid biosynthetic pathway ofCorynebacterium glutamicum. To develop basic technologies for engineering, we employed an approach that begins by isolating a fatty acid-secreting mutant without depending on mutagenic treatment. This was followed by genome analysis to characterize its genetic background. The selection of spontaneous mutants resistant to the palmitic acid ester surfactant Tween 40 resulted in the isolation of a desired mutant that produced oleic acid, suggesting that a single mutation would cause increased carbon flow down the pathway and subsequent excretion of the oversupplied fatty acid into the medium. Two additional rounds of selection of spontaneous cerulenin-resistant mutants led to increased production of the fatty acid in a stepwise manner. Whole-genome sequencing of the resulting best strain identified three specific mutations (fasR20,fasA63up, andfasA2623). Allele-specific PCR analysis showed that the mutations arose in that order. Reconstitution experiments with these mutations revealed that onlyfasR20gave rise to oleic acid production in the wild-type strain. The other two mutations contributed to an increase in oleic acid production. Deletion offasRfrom the wild-type strain led to oleic acid production as well. Reverse transcription-quantitative PCR analysis revealed that thefasR20mutation brought about upregulation of thefasAandfasBgenes encoding fatty acid synthases IA and IB, respectively, by 1.31-fold ± 0.11-fold and 1.29-fold ± 0.12-fold, respectively, and of theaccD1gene encoding the β-subunit of acetyl-CoA carboxylase by 3.56-fold ± 0.97-fold. On the other hand, thefasA63upmutation upregulated thefasAgene by 2.67-fold ± 0.16-fold. In flask cultivation with 1% glucose, thefasR20 fasA63upfasA2623triple mutant produced approximately 280 mg of fatty acids/liter, which consisted mainly of oleic acid (208 mg/liter) and palmitic acid (47 mg/liter).