Uptake system of lignin-derived aromatic acids in promising Sphingomonadaceae strains for lignin valorization through biological funneling

The production of value-added chemicals from lignin-derived aromatic compounds through bacterial catabolism has attracted attention. Sphingobium lignivorans SYK-6 can catabolize various lignin-derived aromatic compounds that can be used for this purpose. PcaK (Sl-PcaK), a member of the major facilitator superfamily (MFS) transporters in SYK-6, is known to be involved in the uptake of protocatechuic acid (PCA) and vanillic acid (VA) in the inner membrane. Here, we demonstrated that Sl-PcaK also mediates the uptake of 4-hydroxybenzoic acid (HBA), syringic acid (SA), and ferulic acid (FA). Saro_0804 (Na-pcaK), with 58% amino acid sequence identity to Sl-PcaK, is present in Novosphingobium aromaticivorans DSM 12444. Na-pcaK plays a role in the uptake of PCA, HBA, VA, and SA. The increased expression of Sl-pcaK or Na-pcaK in SYK-6 cells improved the conversion rates of VA, SA, and FA 1.12-1.33-fold compared with the control strain, suggesting that these genes could serve as tools to improve the production efficiency of target metabolites. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-025-08757-x.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Scientific Reports

• Publication date

  2025-07-02

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Chemistry, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/s41598-025-08757-xPMID 40604037PMCID 12223119
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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