Metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli for shikimate pathway derivative production from glucose–xylose co-substrate

Glucose and xylose are the major components of lignocellulose. Effective utilization of both sugars can improve the efficiency of bioproduction. Here, we report a method termed parallel metabolic pathway engineering (PMPE) for producing shikimate pathway derivatives from glucose–xylose co-substrate. In this method, we seek to use glucose mainly for target chemical production, and xylose for supplying essential metabolites for cell growth. Glycolysis and the pentose phosphate pathway are completely separated from the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle. To recover cell growth, we introduce a xylose catabolic pathway that directly flows into the TCA cycle. As a result, we can produce 4.09 g L−1 cis,cis-muconic acid using the PMPE Escherichia coli strain with high yield (0.31 g g−1 of glucose) and produce l-tyrosine with 64% of the theoretical yield. The PMPE strategy can contribute to the development of clean processes for producing various valuable chemicals from lignocellulosic resources.