P34: Isoprene production in Escherichia coli

Isoprene is a volatile C5 terpenoid that is released mainly from leaves of many deciduous trees and some bacteria. Isoprene is present under standard conditions as a colorless liquid. Also, it is the monomer of natural rubber and is a precursor to an immense variety of other naturally occurring compounds. Isoprene is an important chemical feedstock used in the synthetic rubber industry. About 800,000 tons per year of cis-polyisoprene are produced from the polymerization of isoprene, and most of this polyisoprene is used in the tire and rubber industry. Isoprene is made from dimethylallyl diphosphate (DMAPP) by isoprene synthase via methyl erythritol 1-phosphate pathway (MEP) in plants. In this study, we constructed plasmid containing isoprene synthase (ispS) from three kinds of plant, Populus alba, Populus trichocarpa, and Pueraria Montana (kudzu) and introduced into E. coli to produce isoprene. By GC analysis, we confirmed isoprene production in E. coli. To produce more isoprene, we introduced pSNA plasmid containing whole mevalonate pathway for DMAPP synthesis, synthesized ispS gene to optimize codon for E. coli, and performed culture in our capture system. In result, we obtained 65mg/L isoprene from recombinant E. coli, which suggests E. coli as potential host strain for isoprene production. Now, we are expecting that isoprene can be made in E. coli much more than now by our future work of engineering. This work was supported by the KRIBB Research Initiative Program, EB-NCRC (Grant No. R15-2003-012-02001-0), and BK21 program of Korea