Developing
a highly efficient and ecofriendly system to produce
desired products from waste can be considered important to a sustainable
society. Here, we report for the first time high-yield production
of lycopene through metabolically engineering an extremophilic microorganism, Deinococcus radiodurans R1, from corn steep liquor
(CSL) and glycerol. First, the crtLm gene-encoding
lycopene cyclase was deleted to prevent the conversion of lycopene
to γ-carotene. Then, the crtB gene-encoding
phytoene synthase and the dxs gene-encoding 1-deoxy-d-xylulose 5-phosphate synthase were overexpressed to increase
carbon flux toward lycopene. The engineered ΔcrtLm/crtB
+
dxs
+
D. radiodurans R1 could produce 273.8 mg/L [80.7 mg/g dry cell weight (DCW)] and
373.5 mg/L (108.0 mg/g DCW) of lycopene from 10 g/L of glucose with
5 g/L of yeast extract and 9.9 g/L of glucose with 20 g/L of CSL,
respectively. Moreover, the lycopene titer and content were increased
by 26% (470.6 mg/L) and 28% (138.2 mg/g DCW), respectively, when the
carbon source was changed to glycerol. Finally, fed-batch fermentation
of the final engineered strain allowed the production of 722.2 mg/L
(203.5 mg/g DCW) of lycopene with a yield and productivity of 20.3
mg/g glycerol and 6.0 mg/L/h, respectively, from 25 g/L of CSL and
35.7 g/L of glycerol.