Enhancing single-cell hyaluronic acid biosynthesis by microbial morphology engineering

Microbial morphology engineering is a novel approach for cell factory to improve the titer of target product in bio-manufacture. Hyaluronic acid (HA), a valuable glycosaminoglycan polymerized by HA synthase (HAS), a membrane protein, is particularly selected as the model product to improve its single-cell HA-producing capacity via morphology engineering. DivIVA and FtsZ, the cell-elongation and cell division related protein, respectively, were both down/up dual regulated in C. glutamicum via weak promoter substitution or plasmid overexpression. Different from the natural short-rod shape, varied morphologies of engineered cells, i.e. small-ellipsoid-like (DivIVA-reduced), bulb-like (DivIVA-enhanced), long-rod (FtsZ-reduced) and dumbbell-like (FtsZ-enhanced), were observed. Applying these morphology-changed cells as hosts for HA production, the reduced expression of both DivIVA and FtsZ seriously inhibited normal cell growth; meanwhile, overexpression of DivIVA didn't show morphology changes, but overexpression of FtsZ surprisingly change the cell-shape into long and thick rod with remarkably enlarged single-cell surface area (more than 5.2-fold-increase). And finally, the single-cell HA-producing capacity of the FtsZ-overexpressed C. glutamicum was immensely improved by 13.5-folds. Flow cytometry analyses verified that the single-cell HAS amount on membrane was enhanced by 2.1 folds. This work is pretty valuable for high titer synthesis of diverse metabolic products with microbial cell factory.