Metabolome analysis revealed the knockout of glyoxylate shunt as an effective strategy for improvement of 1-butanol production in transgenic Escherichia coli.

High 1-butanol titer has been achieved in a transgenic Escherichia coli strain JCL299FT with a heterologous 1-butanol pathway by deleting competing pathways, balancing of cofactor and resolving free CoA imbalance. However, further improvement of 1-butanol production is still possible in the highest producing strain JCL299FT as indicated by the accumulation of acetate, a major undesired by-product during bio-production by microorganisms that competes with 1-butanol production for the available acetyl-CoA and inhibits protein synthesis resulting in poor growth. In this study, liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS)-based metabolome analysis was performed to identify new rate limiting steps in the 1-butanol production pathway of E. coli strain JCL299FT. The results of metabolome analysis showed increased amounts of glyoxylate in JCL299FT compared to the previous highest-producing strain JCL299F. Knocking out aceA successfully decreased the amount of glyoxylate and reduced acetate accumulation, resulting in the increased levels of TCA cycle and 1-butanol pathway metabolites. These observations indicated that there was a redirection of flux from acetate to TCA cycle and 1-butanol producing pathway, which led to better growth of the 1-butanol producing strain. Consequently, 1-butanol production titer was improved by 39% and the production yield was improved by 12% in M9 medium supplemented with yeast extract. This study is the first report of using the knockout of aceA, the first gene in the glyoxylate shunt that encodes isocitrate lyase, as an effective strategy to reduce acetate overflow in 1-butanol producing E. coli.