Cadaverine production by heterologous expression of Klebsiella oxytoca lysine decarboxylase

Cadaverine, as a biogenic amine, is an important platform chemical for the production of industrial polymers, such as polyamides, polyurethanes, and nylon. Previous efforts focused on the bio-based production of cadaverine using two lysine decarboxylases of Escherichia coli CadA and LdcC. In this study, we report the biotransformation of cadaverine using a lysine decarboxylase from Klebsiella oxytoca. Codon optimization of the gene encoding this enzyme was carried on for the heterologous expression in E. coli, which led to a system that converted more than 24% lysine-HCl to cadaverine compared to the same system expressing CadA. The system was further optimized by using three different inducible promoters to control the expression of lysine decarboxylase gene of K. oxytoca in E. coli. The final optimized system converted lysine-HCl to cadaverine at a conversion rate of 0.133%/min/g. When the optimized system described above is coupled to an industrial process, the combined process has the potential to produce cadaverine with high conversion efficiency (46%) from sugar.