Abstract
Anthranilic acid is an important chemical with recognized industrial values. As a precursor of amino acid tryptophan, anthranilic acid can be over-produced by engineering the tryptophan biosynthesis pathway. In this study, we utilized metabolic engineering approaches to enable anthranilic acid production in bacterium E. coli. Furthermore, an anthranilic acid biosensor20 assisted cell selection technique was adopted to improve the microbial cell population composition and the overall production performance. An anthranilic acid in situ extraction method was also recruited to reduce the product accumulation and facilitate the cell selection. Based on these efforts, the engineered E. coli produced 688 mg/L anthranilic acid from glucose within 48 h. The results of this work hereby demonstrate the effectiveness of coupling biosensor-assisted cell selection and in situ product removal for microbial biosynthesis enhancement.