Enhanced flavonoid production in Streptomyces venezuelae via metabolic engineering

Metabolic engineering of plant-specific phenylpropanoid biosynthesis has attracted an increasing amount of attention recently, owing to the vast potential of flavonoids as nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals. Recently, we have developed a recombinant Streptomyces venezuelae as a heterologous host for the production of flavonoids. In this study, we successfully improved flavonoid production by expressing two sets of genes predicted to be involved in malonate assimilation. The introduction of matB and matC encoding for malonyl-CoA synthetase and the putative dicarboxylate carrier protein, respectively, from Streptomyces coelicolor into the recombinant S. venezuelae strains expressing flavanone and flavone biosynthetic genes resulted in enhanced production of both flavonoids.