Production of Coenzyme A Using Thermophilic Enzymes

Coenzyme A (CoA) is an essential cofactor present in all domains of life and is involved in numerous metabolic pathways, including fatty acid metabolism, pyruvate oxidation through the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, and the production of secondary metabolites. This characteristic makes CoA a commercially valuable compound in the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and clinical industries. However, CoA is difficult to accumulate in living cells at a high level, since it is consumed in multiple metabolic pathways, hampering its manufacturing by typical cell cultivation and extraction approaches. The feedback inhibition by CoA to a biosynthetic enzyme, pantothenate kinase (PanK), is also a serious obstacle for the high-titer production of CoA. To overcome this challenge, production of CoA, in which the CoA biosynthetic pathway was reconstructed outside cells using recombinant thermophilic enzymes, was performed. The pathway was designed to be insensitive to the feedback inhibition of CoA using CoA-insensitive type III PanK from the thermophilic bacterium Thermus thermophilus. Furthermore, a statistical approach using design of experiments (DOE) was employed to rationally determine the enzyme loading ratio to maximize the CoA production rate. Consequently, 0.94 mM CoA could be produced from 2 mM d-pantetheine through the designed pathway. We hypothesized that the insufficient conversion yield is attributed to the high value of T. thermophilus PanK toward ATP. Based on these observations, possible CoA regulation mechanisms in T. thermophilus and approaches to improve the feasibility of CoA production through the pathway have been investigated. The biosynthesis of coenzyme A (CoA) in bacteria and eukaryotes is regulated by feedback inhibition targeting type I and type II pantothenate kinase (PanK). Type III PanK is found only in bacteria and is generally insensitive to CoA. Previously, type III PanK from the hyperthermophilic bacterium Thermotoga maritima was shown to defy this typical characteristic and instead shows inhibition toward CoA. In the present study, phylogenetic analysis combined with functional analysis of type III PanK from thermophiles revealed that the CoA-sensitive behavior of type III PanK from T. maritima is uncommon. We cloned type III PanKs from Thermus thermophilus and sp. strain 30 and showed that neither enzyme's activities were inhibited by CoA. Furthermore, we utilized type III PanK for a one-pot cascade reaction to produce CoA.