Engineering an Escherichia coli-Saccharomyces cerevisiae consortium for 2-phenylethyl glucosinolate biosynthesis.
Microbial co-culture engineering enables first successful biosynthesis of 2-phenylethyl glucosinolate from phenylalanine, achieving significant titer improvements.
- Why it matters: Producing complex glucosinolates in microbes has been limited by challenges in expressing key enzymes, hindering their biotechnological applications in nutrition and agriculture.
- What they did: A modular system combining Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae was developed, optimizing enzyme variants and cofactors, including sulfate feeding, to enhance 2PE production.
- The result: The approach increased 2PE titers tenfold and demonstrated the feasibility of microbial synthesis of complex glucosinolates, paving the way for scalable bioproduction platforms.