원문정보
초록
영어
Retinal and its derivatives represent essential compounds in many biological systems. In animals, they are synthesized through a symmetrical cleavage of β-carotene catalyzed by a monooxygenase. We have cloned β-carotene 15,15'-monooxygenase genes from 4 bacteria of Synechococcus elongatus, Salinibacter ruber, Natronomonas pharaonis and Halobacterium salinarum and 2 vertebrates of Homo sipiens and Mus musculus. We also synthesized an artificial E. coli codon optimized gene, based on the amino acid sequence of blh gene of uncultured marine bacterium 66A03. The β-carotene 15,15'-monooxygenase expression in E. coli engineered to produce β-carotene led to accumulation of retinal at the expense of β-carotene. Retinal production of 2.2mg/L was obtained in recombinant E. coli harboring blh, monooxygenase genes of H. salinarum while the other monooxygenase genes cloned here produced trace amount of retinal. The highest retinal amount of 8.9 mg/L was produced by the artificial E. coli codon optimized monooxygenase genes. This work was supported by the EB-NCRC (Grant No. R15-2003-012-02001-0), BioGreen 21 Program (Grant No. 2005041034590), Brain Pool program and BK21 program of Korea.