Background
Bitespiramycin (BT) is produced by recombinant spiramycin (SP) producing strain
Streptomyces spiramyceticus
harboring a heterologous 4″-O-isovaleryltransferase gene (
ist
). Exogenous
l
-Leucine (
l
-Leu) could improve the production of BT. The
orf2
gene found from the genomic sequence of
S. spiramyceticus
encodes a leucine-responsive regulatory protein (Lrp) family regulator named as SSP_Lrp. The functions of SSP_Lrp and
l
-Leu involved in the biosynthesis of spiramycin (SP) and BT were investigated in
S. spiramyceticus
.
Results
SSP_Lrp was a global regulator directly affecting the expression of three positive regulatory genes,
bsm23
,
bsm42
and
acyB2
, in SP or BT biosynthesis. Inactivation of SSP_Lrp gene in
S. spiramyceticus
1941 caused minor increase of SP production. However, SP production of the Δ
SSP_Lrp
-SP strain containing an SSP_Lrp deficient of putative
l
-Leu binding domain was higher than that of
S. spiramyceticus
1941 (476.2 ± 3.1 μg/L versus 313.3 ± 25.2 μg/L, respectively), especially SP III increased remarkably. The yield of BT in Δ
SSP_Lrp-
BT strain was more than twice than that in 1941-BT. The fact that intracellular concentrations of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) decreased markedly in the Δ
SSP_Lrp
-SP demonstrated increasing catabolism of BCAAs provided more precursors for SP biosynthesis. Comparative analysis of transcriptome profiles of the Δ
SSP_Lrp
-SP and
S. spiramyceticus
1941 found 12 genes with obvious differences in expression, including 6 up-regulated genes and 6 down-regulated genes. The up-regulated genes are related to PKS gene for SP biosynthesis, isoprenoid biosynthesis, a Sigma24 family factor, the metabolism of aspartic acid, pyruvate and acyl-CoA; and the down-regulated genes are associated with ribosomal proteins, an AcrR family regulator, and biosynthesis of terpenoid, glutamate and glutamine.
Conclusion
SSP_Lrp in
S. spiramyceticus
was a negative regulator involved in the SP and BT biosynthesis. The deletion of SSP_Lrp putative
l
-Leu binding domain was advantageous for production of BT and SP, especially their III components.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (10.1186/s12934-019-1086-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.