Scientists plan new biosynthetic pathways for short-chain essential amines

Overview

• Post By : Kumar Jeetendra


• Source: KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)


• Date: 18 Jan,2021

Researchers report a new strategy for the microbial production of multiple short-chain primary amines through retrobiosynthesis.

KAIST metabolic engineers introduced the bio-based production of numerous short-chain primary amines that have a broad assortment of applications in chemical industries for the first time.

The research team led by Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering made the book biosynthetic pathways for short-chain primary amines by combining retrobiosynthesis and a precursor selection step.

The study team verified the newly designed pathways by verifying the in vivo production of 10 short-chain primary amines by supplying the precursors.

Moreover, the platform Escherichia coli strains were metabolically engineered to create three proof-of-concept short-chain primary amines from sugar, demonstrating the possibility of the bio-based production of varied short-chain primary amines from renewable resources.

The research team said this study expands the strategy of systematically designing biosynthetic pathways for the production of a group of related substances as demonstrated by multiple short-chain primary amines as illustrations.

Currently, the majority of the industrial chemicals used in our daily lives are produced with petroleum-based products. However, there are numerous serious issues with the petroleum industry such as the depletion of fossil fuel reserves and environmental problems including global warming.

To fix these problems, the sustainable production of industrial chemicals and substances is being explored with germs as cell factories and renewable non-food biomass as raw materials for an alternative to petroleum-based products.

The engineering of these microorganisms has increasingly become more efficient and effective with the assistance of systems metabolic engineering – a practice of engineering the metabolism of a living organism toward the production of a desired metabolite. In this respect, the number of chemicals generated using biomass as a raw material has substantially increased.

Even though the scope of chemicals that are producible using microorganisms continues to expand through advances in systems metabolic engineering, the biological production of short-chain primary amines has not yet been reported regardless of their industrial importance.

Short-chain primary amines are the chemicals that have an alkyl or aryl group in the place of a hydrogen atom in ammonia with carbon chain lengths ranging from C1 to C7.

The main reason why the bio-based creation of short-chain primary amines was not yet possible was because of their unknown biosynthetic pathways. Therefore, the group designed synthetic biosynthetic pathways for short-chain primary amines by combining retrobiosynthesis and a precursor selection measure.

The retrobiosynthesis enabled the systematic design of a biosynthetic pathway for short-chain primary amines using a set of biochemical reaction rules that explain chemical transformation patterns between a substrate and product molecules in an atomic level.

These multiple precursors predicted for the possible biosynthesis of each short-chain primary amine were sequentially narrowed down by using the precursor selection step for efficient metabolic engineering experiments.

Our research demonstrates the possibility of the renewable production of short-chain primary amines for the first time. We are planning to increase production efficiencies of short-chain primary amines. We believe that our study will play an important role in the development of sustainable and eco-friendly bio-based industries and the reorganization of the chemical industry, which is mandatory for solving the environmental problems threating the survival of mankind.”

Sang Yup Lee, Distinguished Professor, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)