An Escherichia coli chassis cell with significantly repressed overflow metabolism

Escherichia coli is the host of choice to produce a wide variety of chemicals, and overflow metabolism is considered as the widespread and major obstacle in microbial synthesis. Here, we constructed an E. coli chassis, the ABKS strain, with significantly suppressed overflow metabolism, presenting similar growth rate, decreased glucose consumption, and increased production of desired chemicals and proteins when compared with wild-type BL21(DE3) strain. To clarify the differences of gene expression, BL21(DE3) wild-type and ABKS strains were grown in minimal medium with glucose as sole carbon source to early stationary phase, and then subjected to scRNA-seq.