22Bioplastics produced from microbial source are promising green alternatives to 23 traditional petrochemical-derived plastics. Nonnatural straight-chain amino acids, 24 especially 5-aminovalerate, 6-aminocaproate and 7-aminoheptanoate are potential 25 monomers for the synthesis of polymeric bioplastics as their primary amine and 26 carboxylic acid are ideal functional groups for polymerization. Previous pathways for 27 5-aminovalerate and 6-aminocaproate biosynthesis in microorganisms are derived from 28 L-lysine catabolism and citric acid cycle, respectively. Here, we show the construction 29 of an artificial iterative carbon-chain-extension cycle in Escherichia coli for 30 simultaneous production of a series of nonnatural amino acids with varying chain length. 31 Overexpression of L-lysine α-oxidase in E. coli yields 2-keto-6-aminocaproate as a 32 non-native substrate for the artificial iterative carbon-chain-extension cycle. The chain-33 extended α-ketoacid is subsequently decarboxylated and oxidized by an α-ketoacid 34 decarboxylase and an aldehyde dehydrogenase, respectively, to yield the nonnatural 35 straight-chain amino acid products. The engineered system demonstrated simultaneous 36 in vitro production of 99.16 mg/L of 5-aminovalerate, 46.96 mg/L of 6-aminocaproate 37 and 4.78 mg/L of 7-aminoheptanoate after 8 hours of enzyme catalysis starting from 2-38 keto-6-aminocaproate as the substrate. Furthermore, simultaneous production of 2.15 39 g/L of 5-aminovalerate, 24.12 mg/L of 6-aminocaproate and 4.74 mg/L of 7-40 aminoheptanoate was achieved in engineered E. coli. This work illustrates a promising 41 metabolic-engineering strategy to access other medium-chain organic acids with -NH2, 42 -SCH3, -SOCH3, -SH, -COOH, -COH, or -OH functional groups through carbon-chain-43 elongation chemistry.44 Keywords: Nonnatural straight chain amino acid, 6-Aminocaproate, Carbon chain 45 elongation, Synthetic biology, Iterative cycle 46 3 47 Abbreviations: 48 NNSCAA, Nonnatural straight chain amino acid; 5AVA, 5-Aminovalerate; 6ACA, 6-49