Plipastatin is a cyclic lipopeptide synthesized by non-ribosomal
peptide synthetases (NRPS), which has a diverse range of applications
in postharvest preservation of fruits and vegetables, biological control,
and feed processing. Whereas the yield of plipastatin in wild Bacillus sp. is low, its chemical structure is complex and
challenging to synthesize, significantly limiting its production and
application. ComQXPA-PsrfA, a quorum-sensing (QS) circuit
from Bacillus amyloliquefaciens, was
constructed in this study. Two QS promoters MuPsrfA and
MtPsrfA, with 35 and 100% increased activity, respectively,
were obtained by mutating the original promoter PsrfA.
Thus, the natural promoter of plipastatin was replaced by a QS promoter
to achieve the dynamic regulation of plipastatin, which increased
the yield of plipastatin by 3.5 times. Integrating ComQXPA into plipastatin
mono-producing M-24:MtPsrfA increased the yield of plipastatin
to 3850 mg/L, representing the highest yield reported to date. Four
new plipastatins were identified via UPLC-ESI-MS/MS
and GC–MS analysis of fermentation products of mono-producing
engineered strains. Among them, three plipastatins contained two double
bonds in the fatty acid side chain, representing the first example
of a new type of plipastatin. Our results indicate that the QS system
ComQXPA-PsrfA of Bacillus can dynamically
regulate plipastatin production, and the pipeline could be extended
to the other strains to regulate target products dynamically.