Metabolic Engineering to Improve 1,5-Diaminopentane Production from Cellobiose Using Bgl-Secreting Corynebacterium glutamicum

Microbial production of 1,5-diaminopentane from renewable feedstock is a promising and sustainable approach for the production of polyamides. We constructed a β-glucosidase (BGL)-secreting Corynebacterium glutamicum and successfully used this strain to produce1,5-diaminopentane from cellobiose and glucose. First, C. glutamicum was metabolically engineered to produce l-lysine, a direct precursor of 1,5-diaminopentane, followed by the co-expression of l-lysine decarboxylase and BGL derived from Escherichia coli and Thermobifida fusca YX (Tfu0937), respectively. This new engineered C. glutamicum strain produced 27 g/L of 1,5-diaminopentane from cellobiose in CGXII minimal medium using fed-batch cultivation. The yield of 1,5-diaminopentane was 0.43 g/g glucose. These results demonstrate the feasibility of1,5-diaminopentane production from cellobiose or cellooligosaccharides using an engineered C. glutamicum strain.