5-Aminolevulinic acid fermentation using engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae

5'-Aminolevulinic acid (ALA) is widely used in the pharmaceutical industry, healthcare, and food production, and is a substrate for the biosynthesis of heme, which is required for respiration and photosynthesis. Enhancement of ALA biosynthesis has never been developed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is a well-known model microorganism used for bioproduction of many value-added compounds.

We demonstrated that metabolic engineering significantly improved ALA production in S. cerevisiae. First, we found that overexpression of HEM1, which encodes ALA synthetase, increased ALA production. Furthermore, addition of an optimal amount of glycine, a substrate for ALA biosynthesis, or levulinic acid, an inhibitor of ALA dehydrogenase, effectively increased ALA production. Next, we developed an assay for multiple metabolites including ALA and found that aconitase, encoded by ACO1 and ACO2, is the rate-limiting enzyme of ALA biosynthesis when sufficient glycine is supplied. Overexpression of ACO2 further enhanced ALA production in S. cerevisiae overexpressing HEM1.

In this study, ALA production in S. cerevisiae was enhanced by metabolic engineering. This study also shows a strategy to identify the rate-limiting step of a target synthetic pathway by assay for multiple metabolites alongside the target product. This strategy can be applied to improve production of other valuable products in the well-studied and well-industrialized microorganism S. cerevisiae.