Malonyl-CoA is an important central metabolite for the production of diverse valuable chemicals including natural products, but its intracellular availability is often limited due to the competition with essential cellular metabolism. Several malonyl-CoA biosensors have been developed for high-throughput screening of targets increasing the malonyl-CoA pool. However, they are limited for use only in and and require multiple signal transduction steps. Here we report development of a colorimetric malonyl-CoA biosensor applicable in three industrially important bacteria: ,, and RppA, a type III polyketide synthase producing red-colored flaviolin, was repurposed as a malonyl-CoA biosensor in Strains with enhanced malonyl-CoA accumulation were identifiable by the colorimetric screening of cells showing increased red color. Other type III polyketide synthases could also be repurposed as malonyl-CoA biosensors. For target screening, a 1,858 synthetic small regulatory RNA library was constructed and applied to find 14 knockdown gene targets that generally enhanced malonyl-CoA level in These knockdown targets were applied to produce two polyketide (6-methylsalicylic acid and aloesone) and two phenylpropanoid (resveratrol and naringenin) compounds. Knocking down these genes alone or in combination, and also in multiple different strains for two polyketide cases, allowed rapid development of engineered strains capable of enhanced production of 6-methylsalicylic acid, aloesone, resveratrol, and naringenin to 440.3, 30.9, 51.8, and 103.8 mg/L, respectively. The malonyl-CoA biosensor developed here is a simple tool generally applicable to metabolic engineering of microorganisms to achieve enhanced production of malonyl-CoA-derived chemicals.

Natural products have been attracting much interest around the world for their diverse applications, especially in drug and food industries. Plants have been a major source of many different natural products. However, plants are affected by weather and environmental conditions and their successful extraction is rather limited. Chemical synthesis is inefficient due to the complexity of their chemical structures involving enantioselectivity and regioselectivity. For these reasons, an alternative means of overproducing valuable natural products using microorganisms has emerged. In recent years, various metabolic engineering strategies have been developed for the production of natural products by microorganisms. Here, the strategies taken to produce natural products are reviewed. For convenience, natural products are classified into four main categories: terpenoids, phenylpropanoids, polyketides, and alkaloids. For each product category, the strategies for establishing and rewiring the metabolic network for heterologous natural product biosynthesis, systems approaches undertaken to optimize production hosts, and the strategies for fermentation optimization are reviewed. Taken together, metabolic engineering has enabled microorganisms to serve as a prominent platform for natural compounds production. This article examines both the conventional and novel strategies of metabolic engineering, providing general strategies for complex natural compound production through the development of robust microbial‐cell factories.

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Phenylpropanoids are a group of plant natural products with medicinal importance derived from aromatic amino acids. Here, we report the production of two representative phenylpropanoids-coniferyl alcohol (CA) and dihydroquercetin (DHQ)from glycerol by engineered Escherichia coli. First, an E. coli strain capable of producing 187.7 mg/L of CA from glycerol was constructed by the introduction of hpaBC from E. coli and OMT1, 4CL4, and CCR1 from Arabidopsis thaliana to the pcoumaric acid producer. Next, an E. coli strain capable of producing 239.4 mg/L of DHQ from glycerol was constructed by the introduction of F3H, TT7, and CPR from A. thaliana to the naringenin producer, followed by engineering the signal peptide of a cytochrome P450 TT7. Furthermore, to demonstrate the production of flavonolignans, a group of heterodimeric phenylpropanoids, from glycerol, ascorbate peroxidase 1 from Silybum marianum was employed and engineered to produce 0.04 μg/L of silybin and 1.29 μg/L of isosilybin from glycerol by stepwise culture.Finally, a single strain harboring all the 16 necessary genes was constructed, resulting in 0.12 μg/L of isosilybin production directly from glycerol. The strategies described here will be useful for the production of pharmaceutically important yet complex natural products.