Metabolic engineering of an auto-regulated Corynebacterium glutamicum chassis for biosynthesis of 5-aminolevulinic acid

[Display omitted] •An auto-regulated C. glutamicum chassis for 5-ALA synthesis was constructed.•Cofactor regeneration was precisely modulated by promoter optimization.•TCA cycle was dynamically regulated to balance cell growth and 5-ALA synthesis.•5-ALA efflux was dynamically controlled by the two-component system HrrSA. One challenge in metabolic engineering for industrial applications is the construction of highly efficient microbial cell factories. For this purpose, dynamic regulation of metabolic flux may be indispensable. In this study, an auto-regulated Corynebacterium glutamicum chassis for 5-aminolevulinic acid (5-ALA) biosynthesis was constructed. First, the expression of critical genes involved in 5-ALA synthesis and cofactor regeneration was precisely modulated. Furthermore, odhA expression was controlled using the strategies of static metabolic engineering (SME, with a weak promoter), dynamic metabolic engineering (DME, with a temperature-sensitive plasmid), and auto-inducible metabolic engineering (AME, with a growth-related promoter). The AME strategy showed the best effect and dynamically balanced the tradeoff between cell growth and 5-ALA synthesis. Additionally, the expression of exporter-encoding rhtA was regulated using AME strategy by the two-component system HrrSA in response to extracellular heme. The final strain A30 achieved the highest 5-ALA production (3.16 g/L) ever reported in C. glutamicum through C5 pathway.