Development of a dual-fluorescence reporter system for high-throughput screening of L-aspartate-α-decarboxylase

Abstract β-Alanine (3-aminopropionic acid) holds great potential in industrial application. It can be obtained through a chemical synthesis route, which is hazardous to the environment. It is well known that l-aspartate-α-decarboxylase (ADC) can convert l-aspartate to β-alanine in bacteria. However, due to the low activity of ADC, industrial production of β-alanine through the green biological route remains unclear. Thus, improving the activity of ADC is critical to reduce the cost of β-alanine production. In this study, we established a dual-fluorescence high-throughput system for efficient ADC screening. By measuring the amount of β-alanine and the expression level of ADC using two different fluorescence markers, we can rapidly quantify the relative activity of ADC variants. From a mutagenesis library containing 2000 ADC variants, we obtained a mutant with 33% increased activity. Further analysis revealed that mutations of K43R and P103Q in ADC significantly improved the yield of β-alanine produced by the whole-cell biocatalysis. Compared with the previous single-fluorescence method, our system can not only quantify the amount of β-alanine but also measure the expression level of ADC with different fluorescence, making it able to effectively screen out ADC variants with improved relative activity. The dual-fluorescence high-throughput system for rapid screening of ADC provides a good strategy for industrial production of β-alanine via the biological conversion route in the future.