Growth-coupled microbial biosynthesis of the animal pigment xanthommatin

The mining of genomes across life has unearthed a bounty of biosynthetic potential to diverse molecules key to a biobased future. While the heterologous expression of metabolic pathways has achieved broad success, most approaches suffer a similar fate in low initial production levels that require extensive, resource-heavy iterative strain engineering refinement. Herein we introduce a growth-coupled biosynthetic (GrowBio) strategy that irrevocably connects microbial growth with specialized compound production. We demonstrate the plug-and-play versatility of GrowBio in the production of the structurally complex animal biopigment xanthommatin, a color-changing ommochrome with material and cosmetic potential. Xanthommatin biosynthesis directly fuels growth of a newly designed Pseudomonas putida 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate auxotroph (PUMA). Aided by genome-scale metabolic modeling, PUMA was designed and built to be controlled by endogenous formate co-produced as a coupled biosynthetic byproduct in the multistep conversion of tryptophan to xanthommatin. Adaptive laboratory evolution was utilized to streamline xanthommatin’s gram-scale bioproduction via growth rate selection, establishing GrowBio as a promising biotechnological approach for establishing and optimizing the microbial production of value-added molecules.