Tianjin Institute of industrial biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and others have made significant breakthroughs in the research of acetyl coenzyme a synthesis

Biological manufacturing is an important part of green low-carbon circular economy in China, with output value of nearly trillion yuan Avoiding food competition with the people is the fundamental guarantee for the sustainable development of bio manufacturing Acetyl coenzyme A is not only the precursor of most biological products, but also the hub of energy and material metabolism in cell life, which plays an important role in the life metabolism network The team of Jiang Huifeng, researcher of Tianjin Institute of industrial biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, used the new enzyme design technology to create an artificial pathway from formaldehyde to acetyl coenzyme a synthesis, providing ideas for the development of new biological manufacturing materials The results were published in nature communications (DOI: 10.1038 / s41467-019-09095-z) under the title of "constructing a synthetic pathway for acetyl coenzyme A from one carbon through enzyme design" From raw materials to acetyl coenzyme A, natural organisms often need more than 8-10 steps of reaction Based on the principle of chemical synthesis, we designed hydroxyacetaldehyde syntheses and acetyl phosphate syntheses from scratch, and created an unnatural pathway (synthetic acetyl CoA pathway: SACA pathway) for the synthesis of acetyl CoA from formaldehyde in three steps By using in vitro enzyme catalysis, in vivo isotope labeling, cell growth and other experiments, the author proved that SACA pathway can effectively transform one carbon into acetyl coenzyme A in vitro or in vivo, demonstrating the powerful ability of synthetic biology technology in breaking through the natural evolution limit SACA pathway, which is designed by human, breaks through the limitation of the inherent metabolism network of organism, has the advantages of large chemical driving force, no energy input, orthogonal to the central metabolism and no carbon loss It is the first artificial biosynthesis pathway of acetyl coenzyme A, and also the shortest one so far It has great scientific significance and practical value The research was supported by the key deployment project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, "artificial biotransformation of carbon dioxide", the Ministry of science and technology 973 and the National Natural Science Foundation Assistant researchers of Tianjin Institute of industrial biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chen Xiaoyun, Liu Yuwan, Yang Qun, Ph.D., and Wang Shanshan, Shanghai University of science and technology, are the co first authors of this paper Jiang Huifeng, researcher of Tianjin Institute of industrial biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Liu Yongjun, Professor of Shandong University and Li Yin, researcher of Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of sciences are co authors.