Efficient Biosynthesis of Difucosyllactose via De Novo GDP-l-Fucose Pathway in Metabolically Engineered Escherichia coli

• DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.3c09742
• Publication Date: 2024-02-20T05:44:51Z
• Authors: Shanquan Liang; Zi He; Dan Liu; Shaoqing Yang; Qiaojuan Yan; Zhengqiang Jiang
• Keywords: Milk, Human; Metabolic Engineering; Guanosine Diphosphate Fucose; Escherichia coli; Humans; Oligosaccharides; Trisaccharides; Fucose

Difucosyllactose (DFL) is an important component of human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) and has significant benefits for the growth and development of infants. So far, a few microbial cell factories have been constructed for the production of DFL, which still have problems of low production and high cost. Herein, a high-level de novo pathway DFL-producing strain was constructed by multistep optimization strategies in Escherichia coli BL21star(DE3). We first efficiently synthesized the intermediate 2'-fucosyllactose (2'-FL) in E. coli BL21star(DE3) by the advisable stepwise strategy. The truncated α-1,3/4-fucosyltransferase (Hp3/4FT) was then introduced into the engineered strain to achieve de novo biosynthesis of DFL. ATP-dependent protease (Lon) and GDP-mannose hydrolase (NudK) were deleted, and mannose-6-phosphate isomerase (ManA) was overexpressed to improve GDP-l-fucose accumulation. The regulator RcsA was overexpressed to fine-tune the expression level of pathway genes, thereby increasing the synthesis of DFL. The final strain produced 6.19 g/L of DFL in the shake flask and 33.45 g/L of DFL in the 5 L fermenter, which were the highest reported titers so far. This study provides a more economical, sustainable, and effective strategy to produce the fucosylated human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs).