earticle

영어

Escherichia coli has been explored as a host for butanol production because of its many advantages such as a fast growth and easy genetic manipulation. However, butanol toxicity is the major concern in the biobutanol production, using E. coli. In particular, E. coli growth is severely inhibited by butanol, almost completely stopped by 1% (vol/vol) butanol. Here we developed a new method to increase the butanol-tolerance of E. coli by artificial transcription factor (ATF) libraries which consist of zinc finger (ZF) DNA-binding proteins and an E. coli cyclic AMP receptor protein (CRP). Using these ATFs, we selected a butanol-tolerant E. coli which can tolerate up to 1.5% (vol/vol) butanol, with a concomitant increase in heat resistance. This result shows that E. coli can be engineered as a promising host for high-yield butanol production.