Metabolic engineering of <i>Escherichia coli</i> for <i>de novo</i> synthesis of L-theanine.

Siquan ZHOU; Di ZHANG; Meijuan XU; Xian ZHANG; Taowei YANG; Zhiming RAO

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Metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli for de novo synthesis of L-theanine.

Author: Siquan ZHOU ¹ ; Di ZHANG ¹ ; Meijuan XU ¹ ; Xian ZHANG ¹ ; Taowei YANG ¹ ; Zhiming RAO ¹
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1. Key Laboratory of Industrial Biotechnology of Ministry of Education, School of Biotechnology, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214122, Jiangsu, China.
Publication Type:Journal Article
Keywords: Escherichia coli; L-theanine; metabolic engineering; pathway optimization
MeSH: Glutamates/biosynthesis*; Metabolic Engineering/methods*; Escherichia coli/genetics*; Fermentation; Transaminases/metabolism*; Amide Synthases/metabolism*; Glucose/metabolism*
From: Chinese Journal of Biotechnology 2025;41(9):3459-3472
CountryChina
Language:Chinese
Abstract: L-theanine is an important natural non-protein amino acid that is widely used in food and medicine. Although in previous studies, a microbial fermentation method for L-theanine without the addition of ethylamine has been developed, the conversion rate of this process needs to be further improved. In this study, we constructed a de novo synthesis pathway of L-theanine with glucose as the substrate. First, an in vitro transformation pathway containing ω-transaminase (TA) and γ-glutamylmethylamide synthetase (GMAS) was designed, optimized, and introduced into the chassis strain Escherichia coli K12 W3110 to achieve de novo synthesis of L-theanine. To improve the synthesis efficiency through metabolic engineering, we increased the copies of the GMAS gene gams and the TA gene spuC and enhanced the expression of the aldehyde dehydrogenase gene eutE to provide sufficient acetaldehyde substrate, knocked out the lactate dehydrogenase gene ldhA and the pyruvate formate lyase gene pflB to block bypass metabolism, and introduced the alanine dehydrogenase gene alD to recycle alanine. Furthermore, we over-expressed the phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase gene ppc to enhance the carbon flux of the TCA cycle, knocked out the succinyl-CoA synthase gene sucCD to reduce the loss of downstream flux of TCA, and integrated the glutamate dehydrogenase gene gdh to enhance the supply of L-glutamate. Finally, the polyphosphate kinase gene ppk was introduced to the ATP cycle, which enhanced the energy supply in L-theanine production. The recombinant strain Tea11 produced 22.60 g/L L-theanine in a 5 L fermenter in 28 h, with a conversion rate of 41.71%. This synthetic pathway in this study balanced the relationship between the supply of ethylamine and the production of theanine, providing a new idea for metabolic engineering of microorganisms to produce L-theanine.