In the context of carbon neutrality, bio-diamine synthesis is an effective way to achieve the low-carbon production and sustainable development. Using synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, protein engineering strategies, we are able to design and construct efficient key enzymes and pathways for the biosynthesis of diamines. In this work, the progress of diamine synthesis is reviewed around two synthetic strategies: microbial de novo fermentation and whole-cell catalysis. The main diamines include 1,4-butanediamine, 1,5-pentanediamine, and 1,6-hexamethylenediamine. The biosynthesis of butanediamine mainly includes ornithine decarboxylation and lysine decarboxylation pathways, and butanediamine is mainly produced by fermentation. However, the current yield of butanediamine is low and cannot meet the requirments of industrial production. The biosynthesis of pentanediamine depends on the decarbosylation of L-lysine, mainly by de novo fermentation and whole-cell catalysis. The whole-cell catalysis for pentanediamine is more efficient, which has been widely used in large-scale production with the maturity of the technology. Hexamethylenediamine is currently synthesized by constructing artificial pathways. In addition, to address the challenges encountered in the biosynthesis of diamines, such as many by-products, poor strain activity, low yield, difficult separation, and purification, we proposed methods to improve the biosynthesis of diamines by combining metabolic engineering and protein engineering to optimize key enzyme catalysis, exploring the mechanism of cell damage caused by diamine accumulation, enhancing the specificity and activity of enzyme catalysis to improve production intensity, and optimizing the fermentation system to simplify the subsequent separation and purification steps. Finally, we foresee the future direction and development prospect of diamine biosynthesis.
LIN Kun
,
LI Zhuang
,
WANG Kun
,
BI Ying
,
JI Xiu-Ling
,
ZHANG Zhi-Gang
,
HUANG Yu-Hong
. Advances in biosynthesis of diamine as core monomers of new nylon materials[J]. The Chinese Journal of Process Engineering, 2023
, 23(7)
: 958
-971
.
DOI: 10.12034/j.issn.1009-606X.223147