Development of a transcription factor-based biosensor strain for reporting α-terpineol production via the alcohol-dependent hemiterpene pathway in Escherichia coli

Abstract

Terpenes constitute a vast and industrially important class of natural products. Yet, microbial production of many high-value terpenoids remains limited by the difficulty of rationally engineering their biosynthetic pathways and the lack of high-throughput screening systems that directly report product formation. This challenge is especially acute for monoterpene alcohols such as α-terpineol (1), whose biosynthesis in heterologous hosts requires coordinated precursor formation, cyclization, and watercapture chemistry. Here, we develop a transcription factor-based whole-cell biosensor strain capable of detecting 1 by engineering the p-cumate repressor CymR through structure-guided directed evolution.Guided by a model of the putative ligand-binding pocket, focused libraries at residues implicated in effector accommodation yielded variants with dramatically improved sensitivity. This culminated in the CymR variant 3-A8, which exhibits a 22-fold increase in dynamic range relative to wild-type. Using this optimized biosensor, we demonstrate in vivo monitoring of 1 production in E. coli by coupling it to an artificial alcohol-dependent hemiterpene (ADH) pathway and downstream modules expressing GPPS and α-terpineol synthase. The integrated biosensor-production system effectively distinguishes the complete biosynthetic pathway from deletions and reports intracellular titers consistent with GC-MS quantification. Together, these results provide the first biosensor for monocyclic monoterpene alcohols and establish a compact, modular framework for high-throughput screening and pathway optimization. This platform sets the stage for accelerating the discovery, engineering, and scalable bioproduction of valuable isoprenoids and other terpene-derived natural products.