Multi-enzymatic cascade reactions with Escherichia coli-based modules for synthesizing various bioplastic monomers from fatty acid methyl esters

Abstract

Multi-enzymatic cascade reaction systems were designed to generate biopolymer monomers using Escherichia coli-based cell modules, capable of carrying out one-pot reactions. Three cell-based modules, including a ω-hydroxylation module (Cell-H^m) to convert fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) to ω-hydroxy fatty acids (ω-HFAs), an amination module (Cell-A^m) to convert terminal alcohol groups of the substrate to amine groups, and a reduction module (Cell-R^m) to convert the carboxyl groups of fatty acids to alcohol groups, were constructed. The product-oriented assembly of these cell modules involving multi-enzymatic cascade reactions generated ω-ADAs (up to 46 mM), α,ω-diols (up to 29 mM), ω-amino alcohols (up to 29 mM) and α,ω-diamines (up to 21 mM) from 100 mM corresponding FAME substrates with varying carbon chain length (C8, C10, and C12). Finally 12-ADA and 1,12-diol were purified with isolated yields of 66.5% and 52.5%, respectively. The multi-enzymatic cascade reactions reported herein present an elegant ‘greener’ alternative for the biosynthesis of various biopolymer monomers from renewable saturated fatty acids.