Dancing with a versatile microbe: Rendering Pseudomonas putida a medium-chain-length α,ω-diol producer

Summary

Medium-chain-length (Mcl) α,ω-diols are important monomers, widely used for polymer industrial. These polymers such as polyester and polyurethane are applied in clothes, plastic bottles, food packaging, etc. However, their production heavily relies on energy-intensive chemical process and unrenewable substrates, often resulting in environmental issues. Industrial microbial biotechnology has enabled the microbial production of many valuable products under mild conditions. It has emerged as a promising approach to address the above-mentioned issues. Previous works based on engineered E. coli cells showcased the feasibility of producing mcl-diols from n-alkanes. In this work, we tailor-engineered Pseudomonas putida KT2440 as a microbial cell factory for this purpose. We successfully built up a four-module (module a, b, c, and d) pathway incapable of converting glucose into diols via medium-chain fatty acids as intermediates. This work paves the way for P. putida being used as an efficient chassis for the production of medium-chain molecules.