In silico Prediction of Escherichia coli Metabolic Engineering Capabilities for 1-Butanol Production

In silico metabolic engineering interventions have received renewed attention due to the increase in the number of annotated genomes and the development of several genome-scale metabolic models. Using the retrosynthetic metabolic pathway prediction method, we engineered metabolic strategies for the production of 1-butanol by Escherichia coli using the OptFlux software platform. The metabolic engineering model shows that the insertion of nucleotide sugar dehydrogenase enzyme from Leptothrix cholodnii is predicted to catalyse the production of 1-butanol in E. coli. The growth rate and the secretion profile of the mutant model was retained as the wild-type. The result demonstrates that the proposed engineered strain is capable of substantial butanol production increase when 1-butanol gene (nsdh/b3544) is overexpressed under semi-anaerobic conditions with fixed glucose and oxygen uptake rates of 8 mmol g DW^-1 h^-1 and 5 mmol g DW^-1 h^-1, respectively. We anticipate that our in silico results would serve as a starting point for novel in vivo metabolic engineering strategies of 1-butanol production in E. coli.