High-Level Terpene Production via a Novel Actinomycetota-Derived MVA Pathway in E. coli.

Abstract

The heterologous production of terpene in microbial hosts is often limited by inefficient and unstable pathway expression, creating a major bottleneck for industrial-scale synthesis. While E. coli as a chassis offers significant advantages, such as rapid growth, ease of cultivation, and genetic tractability. Its endogenous supply of terpenoid precursors remains a critical constraint, fundamentally restricting high-yield production. To address this challenge, we developed a genomically integrated Mevalonate (MVA) pathway from Actinomycetota in E. coli BL21(DE3) to enhance terpene precursor supply. Our approach began with an in silico multi-layer global genome mining analysis of 25,261 Actinomycetota genomes to identify a series of MVA pathway enzymes with potentially high catalytic efficiency, created a high-efficiency chassis E. coli MVA platform (ecMVA-1 and ecMVA-2) for terpene precursor synthesis. Its functionality was validated by testing eight distinct TSs. Among them, the fermentation of artemisinin precursor amorphadiene using a 5-liter bioreactor yielded 947.80 mg/L. These results indicated that E. coli (MVA) is well-suited for TS studies in the laboratory as well as holding significant promise for industrial applications. In addition, this in silico approach offers a new perspective for metabolic engineering and provides potential reservoir of diverse chassis for the industrial production of terpenoid-derived compounds.