Enhanced production of bacitracin by knocking out of amino acid permease gene yhdG in Bacillus licheniformis DW2

Abstract:

Bacitracin is a broad-spectrum polypeptide antibiotic, which is formed by 11 amino acids residues. Precursor amino acids supply might be the limit factor during bacitracin fermentation. First, our results demonstrated that increasing Ile and Leu supplies were regarded as the efficient strategies for the enhanced titer of bacitracin. Then, the amino acid permease YhdG, which was identified as the BCAA permease, was deleted and overexpressed in DW2, respectively. Our results showed that knocking out of permease YhdG could improve bacitracin production remarkablely. The bacitracin titer of the yhdG deficient strain DW2△yhdG reached 917.35 U/mL by flask fermentation, increased by 11% compared with that of DW2. In addition, the bacitracin titer was decreased by 25% in the YhdG overexpressed strain. Meanwhile, the intracellular concentrations of BCAA were higher than DW2 during the biosynthesis of bacitracin. The above results suggested that the permease YhdG might act as an exporter for branched chain amino acids in B. licheniformis DW2. Taken together, the increasing intracellular concentrations of branched chain amino acids by deleting amino acid permease YhdG could improve bacitracin titer. This study provided a new strategy for high-level production of bacitracin.