Acetic acid is an abundant material that can be used as a carbon source by microorganisms. Despite its abundance, its toxicity and low energy content make it hard to utilize as a sole carbon source for biochemical production. To increase acetate utilization and isobutanol production with engineered Escherichia coli, the feasibility of utilizing acetate and metabolic engineering was investigated. The expression of acs, pckA, and maeB increased isobutanol production by up to 26%, and the addition of TCA cycle intermediates indicated that the intermediates can enhance isobutanol production. For isobutanol production from acetate, acetate uptake rates and the NADPH pool were not limiting factors compared to glucose as a carbon source. This work represents the first approach to produce isobutanol from acetate with pyruvate flux optimization to extend the applicability of acetate. This technique suggests a strategy for biochemical production utilizing acetate as the sole carbon source.

Recently, the bio-production of α,ω-dicarboxylic acids (DCAs) has gained significant attention, which potentially leads to the replacement of the conventional petroleum-based products. In this regard, the lipid accumulating yeast Candida tropicalis, has been recognized as a promising microbial host for DCA biosynthesis: it possess the unique ω-oxidation pathway where the terminal carbon of α-fatty acids is oxidized to form DCAs with varying chain lengths. However, despite such industrial importance, its cellular physiology and lipid accumulation capability remain largely uncharacterized. Thus, it is imperative to better understand the metabolic behavior of this lipogenic yeast, which could be achieved by a systems biological approach. To this end, herein, we reconstructed the genome-scale metabolic model of C. tropicalis, iCT646, accounting for 646 unique genes, 945 metabolic reactions, and 712 metabolites. Initially, the comparative network analysis of iCT646 with other yeasts revealed several distinctive metabolic reactions, mainly within the amino acid and lipid metabolism including the ω-oxidation pathway. Constraints-based flux analysis was, then, employed to predict the in silico growth rates of C. tropicalis which are highly consistent with the cellular phenotype observed in glucose and xylose minimal media chemostat cultures. Subsequently, the lipid accumulation capability of C. tropicalis was explored in comparison with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, indicating that the formation of "citrate pyruvate cycle" is essential to the lipid accumulation in oleaginous yeasts. The in silico flux analysis also highlighted the enhanced ability of pentose phosphate pathway as NADPH source rather than malic enzyme during lipogenesis. Finally, iCT646 was successfully utilized to highlight the key directions of C. tropicalis strain design for the whole cell biotransformation application to produce long-chain DCAs from alkanes. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2016;113: 1993-2004. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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