Re-designing Escherichia coli for high-yield production of β-alanine by metabolic engineering

β-Alanine is the only natural β-amino acid and an important precursor for pantothenic acid (vitamin B5) synthesis. In this work, to improve the β-alanine fermentative production, collaborative modifications mainly focused on aspartate ammonia-lyase (aspA), phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) – pyruvate (PYR) – oxaloacetate (OAA) – L-aspartate nodes, glucose uptake system, and β-alanine uptake system were performed, including knock out of aspA, reducing the consumption of central metabolic nodes PEP and PYR, enforcement of the non-PEP-dependent transferase system (non-PTS), inactivation of gluconeogenesis through deleting pck gene, and disruption of β-alanine uptake system. As a result, a significantly enhanced β-alanine accumulation was achieved. The β-alanine titer was increased to 6.67 g/L (final strain B15) from 2.46 g/L (original strain B1) in shake flask fermentation, and a titer of 41.12 g/L was achieved in 5-L fermentor fermentation. With the presence of succinic acid (0.25 g/L), the β-alanine titer eventually reached 52.61 g/L at 72 h, and a high productivity (0.73 g/L/h) and yield (0.268 g/g glucose) were also obtained. The yield was relatively higher compared with the reported levels and the B15 exhibited a remarkable fermentation stability over a long period. This result laid foundation for industrialization of β-alanine fermentative production. [Display omitted] •Deletion of aspA gene improved the β-alanine biosynthesis (34.15 %).•Knocking out gene dadx resulted in a nearly 10 % increased β-alanine titer.•Knocking out gene pck resulted in 45.89 % increased β-alanine titer.•Addition of succinic acid (0.25 g/L) could improve β-alanine production.