ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microbiotechnology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1597704
This article is part of the Research TopicMetabolic Engineering and Synthetic Biology for Sustainable Microbial Cell FactoriesView all 7 articles
Construction of an engineered Bacillus subtilis for production of poly-γ-glutamic acids with specific molecular weights
Provisionally accepted
- 1Guilin Medical University, Guilin, China
- 2Guangxi University, Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Region, China
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Poly-γ-glutamic acid (γ-PGA) with different molecular weight (Mw) exhibits different properties and therefore has a variety of applications. At present, the γ-PGA is mainly produced by Bacillus species. However, the production of γ-PGAs with specific Mws often requires multiple strains, which limits the development and application of γ-PGA. In this study, we aimed to construct an engineered Bacillus subtilis strain for dynamic regulation of Mw of the produced γ-PGA. First, the engineered Bacillus subtilis strains were constructed for γ-PGA production. When the hydrolase genes cwlO, pgdS and ggt in B. subtilis were deleted, the γ-PGA Mw and titer increased by 220.1% (2.42×10 7 Da) and 47.81% (8.44 g/L). Furthermore, the expression level of PgdS was dynamically regulated by IPTG-induced promoter. The γ-PGA with Mw ranging from 9.55×10 4 Da to 2.15×10 7 Da was produced by change of IPTG addition time in an engineered strain, with the titer of 6.28-8.57 g/L. Finally, in the 5-L fermenter, the γ-PGA with Mw ranging from 8.3×10 4 Da to 1.87×10 7 Da was produced in optimal conditions. In summary, an engineered strain that can dynamically regulate the γ-PGA Mw and produce γ-PGAs with specific Mws was obtained, and its regulatory range was wider than that of previous studies, which increased the application potential.
Keywords: poly-γ-glutamic acid, Molecular Weight, Bacillus subtilis, hydrolase, Dynamic regulation
Received: 21 Mar 2025; Accepted: 12 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lin, Ding, Shu, Chen, Li, Duan and Zeng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Wei Zeng, Guilin Medical University, Guilin, China
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