Combining De Ley–Doudoroff and methylerythritol phosphate pathways for enhanced isoprene biosynthesis from d-galactose

An engineered Escherichia coli strain was developed for enhanced isoprene production using D-galactose as substrate. Isoprene is a valuable compound that can be biosynthetically produced from pyruvate and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate (G3P) through the methylerythritol phosphate pathway (MEP). The Leloir and De Ley-Doudoroff (DD) pathways are known existing routes in E. coli that can supply the MEP precursors from D-galactose. The DD pathway was selected as it is capable of supplying equimolar amounts of pyruvate and G3P simultaneously. To exclusively direct D-galactose toward the DD pathway, an E. coli ΔgalK strain with blocked Leloir pathway was used as the host. To obtain a fully functional DD pathway, a dehydrogenase encoding gene (gld) was recruited from Pseudomonas syringae to catalyze D-galactose conversion to D-galactonate. Overexpressions of endogenous genes known as MEP bottlenecks, and a heterologous gene, were conducted to enhance and enable isoprene production, respectively. Growth test confirmed a functional DD pathway concomitant with equimolar generation of pyruvate and G3P, in contrast to the wild-type strain where G3P was limiting. Finally, the engineered strain with combined DD-MEP pathway exhibited the highest isoprene production. This suggests that the equimolar pyruvate and G3P pools resulted in a more efficient carbon flux toward isoprene production. This strategy provides a new platform for developing improved isoprenoid producing strains through the combined DD-MEP pathway.