Production of Acrylic Acid By Metabolically Engineered Escherichia coli 

Acrylic acid is an important bulk chemical with an annual production of 4.2 million tons, and most of it is currently produced by oxidation of propylene. To replace petroleum-based process, production of acrylic acid from renewable resources is highly important. Herein, we report a novel biosynthetic route to produce acrylic acid from glucose via beta-alanine, beta-alanyl-CoA, and acrylyl-CoA. First, Escherichia coli was metabolically engineered to produce beta-alanine as a precursor, and deamination of beta-alanine was catalyzed by sequential enzymatic reactions. We screened the corresponding enzymes and optimized the production. Finally, the best strain produced 41 mg/ L acrylic acid in flask cultivation. (This work was supported by the Technology Development Program to Solve Climate Changes on Systems Metabolic Engineering for Biorefineries from the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) through the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea (NRF-2012M1A2A2026556 and NRF-2012M1A2A2026557))