Metabolic Engineering for Production of 5-Aminovalerate and Glutarate Using Escherichia coli

5-Aminovalerate (5AVA) is the precursor of valerolactam which is a potential building block for nylon 5, and is a C5 platform chemical for synthesizing 5-hydroxyvalerate, glutarate, and 1,5-pentanediol. Escherichia coli was metabolically engineered for the production of 5-aminovalerate (5AVA) and glutarate. When the recombinant E. coli WL3110 strain expressing the Pseudomonas putida davAB genes encoding delta-aminovaleramidase and lysine 2-monooxygenase, respectively, were cultured in a medium containing 20 g/L of glucose and 10 g/L of l-lysine, 3.6 g/L of 5AVA was produced by converting 7 g/L of l-lysine. When the davAB genes were introduced into recombinant E. coli strain XQ56 allowing enhanced l-lysine synthesis, 0.27 and 0.5 g/L of 5AVA were produced directly from glucose by batch and fed-batch cultures, respectively. Further conversion of 5AVA into glutarate could be demonstrated by expression of the P. putida gabTD genes encoding 5AVA aminotransferase and glutarate semialdehyde dehydrogenase. When recombinant E. coli WL3110 strain expressing the davAB and gabTD genes was cultured in a medium containing 20 g/L glucose, 10 g/L l-lysine and 10 g/L α-ketoglutarate, 1.7 g/L of glutarate was produced. [This work was supported by the Technology Development Program to Solve Climate Changes on Systems Metabolic Engineering for Biorefineries from the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (MEST) through the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF-2012-C1AAA001-2012M1A2A2026556). Further support by the World Class University program (R32-2008-000-10142-0) of the MEST are appreciated.]