TCA Cycle and Its Relationship with Clavulanic Acid Production: A Further Interpretation by Using a Reduced Genome-Scale Metabolic Model of Streptomyces clavuligerus

Heterologous overproduction of oviedomycin by refactoring biosynthetic gene cluster and metabolic engineering of host strain Streptomyces coelicolor

BACKGROUND

Oviedomycin is one among several polyketides known for their potential as anticancer agents. The biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC) for oviedomycin is primarily found in Streptomyces antibioticus. However, because this BGC is usually inactive under normal laboratory conditions, it is necessary to employ systematic metabolic engineering methods, such as heterologous expression, refactoring of BGCs, and optimization of precursor biosynthesis, to allow efficient production of these compounds.

RESULTS

Oviedomycin BGC was captured from the genome of Streptomyces antibioticus by a newly constructed plasmid, pCBA, and conjugated into the heterologous strain, S. coelicolor M1152. To increase the production of oviedomycin, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) system was utilized in an in vitro setting to refactor the native promoters within the ovm BGC. The target promoters of refactoring were selected based on examination of factors such as transcription levels and metabolite profiling. Furthermore, genome-scale metabolic simulation was applied to find overexpression targets that could enhance the biosynthesis of precursors or cofactors related to oviedomycin production. The combined approach led to a significant increase in oviedomycin production, reaching up to 670 mg/L, which is the highest titer reported to date. This demonstrates the potential of the approach undertaken in this study.

CONCLUSIONS

The metabolic engineering approach used in this study led to the successful production of a valuable polyketide, oviedomycin, via BGC cloning, promoter refactoring, and gene manipulation of host metabolism aided by genome-scale metabolic simulation. This approach can be also useful for the efficient production of other secondary molecules encoded by 'silent' BGCs.

Systems metabolic engineering of Streptomyces venezuelae for the enhanced production of pikromycin

Pikromycin is an important precursor of drugs, for example, erythromycin. Hence, systems metabolic engineering for the enhanced pikromycin production can contribute to the development of pikromycin-related drugs. In this study, metabolic genes in Streptomyces venezuelae were systematically engineered for the enhanced pikromycin production. For this, a genome-scale metabolic model of S. venezuelae was reconstructed and simulated, which led to the selection of 11 metabolic gene targets. These metabolic genes, including four overexpression targets and seven knockdown targets, were individually engineered first. Next, two overexpression targets and two knockdown targets were selected based on the 11 strains' production performances in order to engineer two to four of these genes together for the potential synergistic effects on the pikromycin production. As a result, the NM1 strain with AQF52_RS24510 (methenyltetrahydrofolate cyclohydrolase/methylenetetrahydrofolate dehydrogenase) overexpression and AQF52_RS30320 (sulfite reductase) knockdown showed the best production performance among all the 22 strains constructed in this study. Fed-batch fermentation of the NM1 strain produced 295.25 mg/L of pikromycin, by far the best production titer using the native producer S. venezuelae, to the best of our knowledge. The systems metabolic engineering strategy demonstrated herein can also be applied to the overproduction of other secondary metabolites using S. venezuelae. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.