Biosynthesis of 2-phenylethanol from styrene using engineered Escherichia coli whole cells

Tianzhen Xiong; Qiuyue Gao; Wei Liu; Wei Li; Guangyan Fan

doi:10.1016/j.enzmictec.2025.110582

Biosynthesis of 2-phenylethanol from styrene using engineered Escherichia coli whole cells

Enzyme Microb Technol. 2025 Jan 8:184:110582. doi: 10.1016/j.enzmictec.2025.110582. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Tianzhen Xiong¹, Qiuyue Gao², Wei Liu³, Wei Li⁴, Guangyan Fan⁴

Affiliations

¹ Dabie Mountain Laboratory, College of Tea and Food Science, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang, Henan 464000, China; Henan Key Laboratory of Tea Plant Biology, College of Tea and Food Science, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang, Henan 464000, China. Electronic address: tzxiong@xynu.edu.cn.
² College of Social Science, Xinyang University, 7th New Avenue West, Xinyang, Henan 464000, China.
³ Institute of Agricultural Quality Standards and Testing Technology, Jilin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Changchun, Jilin 130000, China.
⁴ Dabie Mountain Laboratory, College of Tea and Food Science, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang, Henan 464000, China.

PMID: 39798251
DOI: 10.1016/j.enzmictec.2025.110582

Abstract

2-Phenylethanol, an aromatic alcohol with a rose scent, is widely used in the cosmetics, food, and pharmaceutical industries. We designed an efficient multi-enzyme cascade pathway for production of 2-phenylethanol from styrene as the substrate. Initially, 2-phenylethanol was produced by overexpression of styrene monooxygenase A (styA), styrene monooxygenase B (styB), styrene oxide isomerase (SOI), alcohol dehydrogenase (yahK), and glucose dehydrogenase (gdh) in Escherichia coli to give 6.28 mM 2-phenylethanol. Subsequently, plasmids with different copy numbers were employed to balance the expression of pathway enzymes to produce 10.28 mM 2-phenylethanol, resulting in a 63.7 % increase in the final yield. Furthermore, the pH and temperature of the whole-cell conversion reaction were optimized, the optimum pH and temperature are 7.5 and 35℃, respectively. Finally, whole-cell conversion experiment was conducted, and the production of 2-phenylethanol reached 48.17 mM within 10 h. This study provides a theoretical and practical foundation for production of 2-phenylethanol.

Keywords: 2-phenylethanol; Cascade reaction; Escherichia coli; Whole-cell biotransformation.