Inducible biosynthesis of bacterial cellulose in recombinant Enterobacter sp. FY-07

Bacterial cellulose (BC) is an extracellular polysaccharide with myriad unique properties, such as high purity, water-holding capacity and biocompatibility, making it attractive in materials science. However, genetic engineering techniques for BC-producing microorganisms are rare. Herein, the electroporation-based gene transformation and the {lambda} Red-mediated gene knockout method with a nearly 100% recombination efficiency were established in the fast-growing and BC hyperproducer Enterobacter sp. FY-07. This genetic manipulation toolkit was validated by inactivating the protein subunit BcsA in the cellulose synthase complex. Subsequently, the inducible BC-producing strains from glycerol were constructed through inducible expression of the key gene fbp in the gluconeogenesis pathway, which recovered more than 80% of the BC production. Finally, the BC properties analysis results indicated that the induced-synthesized BC pellicles were looser, more porous and reduced crystallinity, which could further broaden the application prospects of BC. To our best knowledge, this is the first attempt to construct the completely inducible BC-producing strains. Our work paves the way for increasing BC productivity by metabolic engineering and broadens the available fabrication methods for BC-based advanced functional materials.