BACKGROUND: Trans-4-hydroxy-L-proline (Hyp) is a value-added amino acid that is an applicable chiral building block in some industries, such as the pharmaceutical, cosmetic and healthcare industries. Given that glycerol is a good carbon source for microbial fermentation and a large amount of glycerol is produced by the biodiesel industry, this study investigated a value-added Hyp fermentation from glycerol using an engineered Escherichia coli strain.
RESULTS: By optimizing the proline-4-hydroxylase (P4H) gene codons and vectors, a constructed recombinant Escherichia coliBL21 strain successfully converted L-proline to Hyp. With a chemo-physical combination mutagenesis, a high Hyp production strain that can grow with glycerol as a sole carbon source, NA45 was isolated, yielding 1.24 g L −1 from 20 g L −1 glycerol at 12 h in a 30 mL/250 mL conical flask fermentation. With further systemic optimization of nutritional elements, the output was enhanced to 1.62 g L −1 . In a 5 L fermentator, the strain achieved a surprisingly high output of 25.4 g L −1 at 48 h in fed batch mode. CONCLUSION: A high Hyp production strain growing well on glycerol as carbon source was successfully engineered, which is a promising candidate for the industrial Hyp production.