L-arginine is a semi-essential amino acid with application in cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and food industries. Metabolic engineering strategies have been applied for overproduction of L-arginine by Corynebacterium glutamicum. LysE was the only known L-arginine exporter of this bacterium. However, an L-arginine-producing strain carrying a deletion of lysE still accumulated about 10 mM L-arginine in the growth medium. Overexpression of the putative putrescine and cadaverine export permease gene cgmA was shown to compensate for the lack of lysE with regard to L-arginine export. Moreover, plasmid-borne overexpression of cgmA rescued the toxic effect caused by feeding of the dipeptide Arg-Ala to lysE-deficient C. glutamicum and argO-deficient Escherichia coli strains. Deletion of the repressor gene cgmR improved L-arginine titers by 5 %. Production of L-lysine and L-citrulline was not affected by cgmA overexpression. Taken together, CgmA may function as an export system not only for the diamine putrescine and cadaverine but also for L-arginine. The major export system for L-lysine and L-arginine LysE may also play a role in L-citrulline export since production of L-citrulline was reduced when lysE was deleted and improved by 45 % when lysE was overproduced.

Background Corynebacterium glutamicum is a well-studied bacterium which naturally overproduces glutamate when induced by an elicitor. Glutamate production is accompanied by decreased 2-oxoglutatate dehydrogenase activity. Elicitors of glutamate production by C. glutamicum analyzed to molecular detail target the cell envelope.ResultsCiprofloxacin, an inhibitor of bacterial DNA gyrase and topoisomerase IV, was shown to inhibit growth of C. glutamicum wild type with concomitant excretion of glutamate. Enzyme assays showed that 2-oxoglutarate dehydrogenase activity was decreased due to ciprofloxacin addition. Transcriptome analysis revealed that this inhibitor of DNA gyrase increased RNA levels of genes involved in DNA synthesis, repair and modification. Glutamate production triggered by ciprofloxacin led to glutamate titers of up to 37 ± 1 mM and a substrate specific glutamate yield of 0.13 g/g. Even in the absence of the putative glutamate exporter gene yggB, ciprofloxacin effectively triggered glutamate production. When C. glutamicum wild type was cultivated under nitrogen-limiting conditions, 2-oxoglutarate rather than glutamate was produced as consequence of exposure to ciprofloxacin. Recombinant C. glutamicum strains overproducing lysine, arginine, ornithine, and putrescine, respectively, secreted glutamate instead of the desired amino acid when exposed to ciprofloxacin.ConclusionsCiprofloxacin induced DNA synthesis and repair genes, reduced 2-oxoglutarate dehydrogenase activity and elicited glutamate production by C. glutamicum. Production of 2-oxoglutarate could be triggered by ciprofloxacin under nitrogen-limiting conditions.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12866-016-0857-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.