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Review
. 2019 Mar;9(3):85.
doi: 10.1007/s13205-019-1619-6. Epub 2019 Feb 15.

Metabolic engineering for the production of l-phenylalanine in Escherichia coli

Xiaozhen Liu  1 , Hao Niu  1 , Qiang Li  1 , Pengfei Gu  1
Affiliations
Review

Metabolic engineering for the production of l-phenylalanine in Escherichia coli

Xiaozhen Liu et al. 3 Biotech. 2019 Mar.

Abstract

As one of the three proteinogenic aromatic amino acids, l-phenylalanine is widely applied in the food, chemical and pharmaceutical industries, especially in production of the low-calorie sweetener aspartame. Microbial production of l-phenylalanine has become attractive as it possesses the advantages of environmental friendliness, low cost, and feedstock renewability. With the progress of metabolic engineering, systems biology and synthetic biology, production of l-phenylalanine from glucose in Escherichia coli with relatively high titer has been achieved by improving the intracellular levels of precursors, alleviating transcriptional repression and feedback inhibition of key enzymes, increasing the export of l-phenylalanine, engineering of global regulators, and overexpression of rate-limiting enzymes. In this review, successful metabolic engineering strategies for increasing l-phenylalanine accumulation from glucose in E. coli are described. In addition, perspectives for further improvement of production of l-phenylalanine are discussed.

Keywords: Escherichia coli; Glucose; Metabolic engineering; l-Phenylalanine.

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Conflict of interest statement

Compliance with ethical standardsThe authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The l-phenylalanine biosynthesis pathway in Escherichia coli
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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