Production of naringenin from D-xylose with co-culture of E. coli and S. cerevisiae.

Heterologous production of naringenin, a valuable flavonoid with various biotechnological applications, was well studied in the model organisms such as Escherichia coli or Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In this study, a synergistic co-culture system was developed for the production of naringenin from xylose by engineering microorganism. A long metabolic pathway was reconstructed in the co-culture system by metabolic engineering. In addition, the critical gene of 4-coumaroyl-CoA ligase (4CL) was simultaneously integrated into the yeast genome as well as a multi-copy free plasmid for increasing enzyme activity. On this basis, some factors related with fermentation process were considered in this study, including fermented medium, inoculation size and the inoculation ratio of two microbes. A yield of 21.16 ± 0.41 mg/L naringenin was produced in this optimized co-culture system, which was nearly eight fold to that of the mono-culture of yeast. This is the first time for the biosynthesis of naringenin in the co-culture system of S. cerevisiae and E. coli from xylose, which lays a foundation for future study on production of flavonoid.