Enhanced Clavulanic Acid Production in Streptomyces clavuligerus NRRL3585 by Overexpression of Regulatory Genes

We constructed four recombinant plasm ids to enhance the production of clavulanic acid (CA) in Streptomyces clavuligerus NRRL3585: (1) pIBRHL1, which includes ccaR, a pathway-specific regulatory gene involved in cephamycin C and CA biosynthesis; (2) pIBRHL2, containing claR, again a regulatory gene, which controls the late steps of CA biosynthesis; (3) pGIBR containing afsR-p, a global regulatory gene from Streptomyces peucetius; and (4) pKS, which harbors all of the genes (ccaR/ claR/ afsR-p). The plasmids were expressed in S. clavuligerus NRRL3585 along with the $ermE^*$ promoter. All of them enhanced the production of CA; 2.5-fold overproduction for pIBRHL1, 1.5-fold for pIBRHL2, 1.6-fold for pGIBR, and 1.5-fold for pKS compared to the wild type.