Enhanced production of poly‑3‑hydroxybutyrate (PHB) by expression of response regulator DR1558 in recombinant Escherichia coli

During microbial production of target product, accumulation of by-products and target product itself may be toxic to host strain. Thus, development of abiotic stress tolerant strains are essential to achieve high productivity of target product with sustained metabolism. Expression of DR1558 from Deinococcus radiodurans, a response regulator in two-component signal transduction system, was reported to increase the tolerance against oxidative stress in Escherichia coli. In this study, the effect of overexpression of DR1558 was examined on poly‑3‑hydroxybutyrate (PHB) production in recombinant E. coli expressing Ralstonia eutropha PHB biosynthesis genes. It was found that dr1558 overexpressing E. coli produced 5.31 g PHB/L and 9.24 g dry cell weight/L, while control strain produced 1.52 g PHB/L and 4.47 g dry cell weight/L in 48 h shake-flask cultivation. Transcriptional analysis of E. coli suggested that DR1558 could improve the expression efficiency of the genes related to central carbon metabolism and threonine bypass pathway in PHB producing E. coli. When thrABC genes were overexpressed, PHB content was increased in recombinant E. coli, which suggests that stress-tolerant genes from extremophiles should be useful in the development of engineered strains for the production of bio-based products.