Glucose Transport in Escherichia coli: From Basics to Transport Engineering

Escherichia coli is the best-known model for the biotechnological production of many biotechnological products, including housekeeping and heterologous primary and secondary metabolites and recombinant proteins, and is an efficient biofactory model to produce biofuels to nanomaterials. Glucose is the primary substrate used as the carbon source for laboratory and industrial cultivation of E. coli for production purposes. Efficient growth and associated production and yield of desired products depend on the efficient sugar transport capabilities, sugar catabolism through the central carbon catabolism, and the efficient carbon flux through specific biosynthetic pathways. The genome of E. coli MG1655 is 4,641,642 bp, corresponding to 4702 genes encoding 4328 proteins. The EcoCyc database describes 532 transport reactions, 480 transporters, and 97 proteins involved in sugar transport. Nevertheless, due to the high number of sugar transporters, E. coli uses preferentially few systems to grow in glucose as the sole carbon source. E. coli nonspecifically transports glucose from the extracellular medium into the periplasmic space through the outer membrane porins. Once in periplasmic space, glucose is transported into the cytoplasm by several systems, including the phosphoenolpyruvate-dependent phosphotransferase system (PTS), the ATP-dependent cassette (ABC) transporters, and the major facilitator (MFS) superfamily proton symporters. In this contribution, we review the structures and mechanisms of the E. coli central glucose transport systems, including the regulatory circuits recruiting the specific use of these transport systems under specific growing conditions. Finally, we describe several successful examples of transport engineering, including introducing heterologous and non-sugar transport systems for producing several valuable metabolites.