Metabolic Engineering of Escherichia coli for para-Amino-Phenylethanol and para-Amino-Phenylacetic Acid Biosynthesis

Aromatic amines are an important class of chemicals which are used as building blocks for the synthesis of polymers and pharmaceuticals. In this study we establish a de novo pathway for the biosynthesis of the aromatic amines para-amino phenylethanol (PAPE) and para-amino-phenylacetic acid (4-APA) in Escherichia coli. We combined a synthetic para amino-L-phenylalanine pathway with the fungal Ehrlich pathway. Therefore we overexpressed the heterologous genes encoding 4-amino-4-deoxychorismate synthase (pabAB from Corynebacterium glutamicum), 4-amino-4-deoxychorismate mutase and 4-amino-4-deoxyprephenate dehydrogenase (papB and papC from Streptomyces venezuelae) and ThDP-dependent keto-acid decarboxylase (aro10 from Saccharomyces cerevisiae) in E. coli. The resulting para-amino-phenylacetaldehyde either was reduced to PAPE or oxidized to 4-APA. The wild type strain E. coli LJ110 with a plasmid carrying these four genes produced (in shake flask cultures) 11 ± 1.5 mg l-1 of PAPE from glucose (4.5 g l-1). By the additional cloning and expression of feaB (phenylacetaldehyde dehydrogenase from E. coli) 36 ± 5 mg l-1 of 4-APA were obtained from 4.5 g l-1 glucose. Competing reactions such as the genes for aminotransferases (aspC and tyrB) or for biosynthesis of L-phenylalanine and L-tyrosine (pheA, tyrA) and for the regulator TyrR were removed. Additionally, the E. coli genes aroFBL were cloned and expressed from a second plasmid. The best producer strains of E. coli showed improved formation of PAPE and 4-APA, respectively. Plasmid-borne expression of an aldehyde reductase (yahK from E. coli) gave best values for PAPE production, whereas feaB-overexpression led to best values for 4-APA. In fed-batch cultivation, the best producer strains achieved 2.5 ± 0.15 g l-1 of PAPE from glucose (11% C mol mol-1 glucose) and 3.4 ± 0.3 g l-1 of 4-APA (17% C mol mol-1 glucose), respectively which are the highest values for recombinant strains reported so far.