High-level production of porphyrins in metabolically engineered Escherichia coli: systematic extension of a pathway assembled from overexpressed genes involved in heme biosynthesis.

ABSTRACT: Due to their spectroscopic properties porphyrins are of special interest for a variety of applications, ranging from drug development or targeting to material sciences and chemical and biological sensors. Since chemical syntheses are limited in terms of regio- and stereoselective functionalization of porphyrins, a biosynthetic approach with tailored enzyme catalysts offers a promising alternative. In this paper, we describe assembly of the entire heme biosynthetic pathway in a three-plasmid system and overexpression of the corresponding genes with Escherichia coli as a host. Without further optimization, this approach yielded remarkable porphyrin production levels, up to 90 micro mol/liter, which is close to industrial vitamin B(12) production levels. Different combinations of the genes we

SUBMITTER: Kwon SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC169110 | biostudies-literature | 2003 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature