Increasing ATP turnover boosts productivity of 2,3-butanediol synthesis in Escherichia coli

The alcohol 2,3-butanediol (2,3-BDO) is an important chemical and an Escherichia coli producer strain was recently engineered for bio-based production of 2,3-BDO. However, further improvements are required for realistic applications.

Here we report that enforced ATP wasting, implemented by overexpressing the genes of the ATP-hydrolyzing F₁-part of the ATPase, leads to significant increases of yield and especially of productivity of 2,3-BDO synthesis in an E. coli producer strain under various cultivation conditions. We studied aerobic and microaerobic conditions as well as growth-coupled and growth-decoupled production scenarios. In all these cases, the specific substrate uptake and 2,3-BDO synthesis rate (up to sixfold and tenfold higher, respectively) were markedly improved in the ATPase strain compared to a control strain. However, aerobic conditions generally enable higher productivities only with reduced 2,3-BDO yields while high product yields under microaerobic conditions are accompanied with low productivities. Based on these findings we finally designed and validated a three-stage process for optimal conversion of glucose to 2,3-BDO, which enables a high productivity in combination with relatively high yield. The ATPase strain showed again superior performance and finished the process twice as fast as the control strain and with higher 2,3-BDO yield.

Our results demonstrate the high potential of enforced ATP wasting as a generic metabolic engineering strategy and we expect more applications to come in the future.