PRODUCTION OF UBIQUINONE IN ESCHERICHIA-COLI BY EXPRESSION OF VARIOUSGENES RESPONSIBLE FOR UBIQUINONE BIOSYNTHESIS

Ubiquinone(-10), known as a component of the electron transfer system in many organisms, has been used for the treatment of heart disease. N o attempt at developing an approach for overproduction of ubiquinone b y genetic engineering has been reported, presumably because of the lim ited number of genes involved in ubiquinone biosynthesis have been clo ned. In the present study we overproduced ubiquinone in Escherichia co li using all available genes involved in ubiquinone biosynthesis. Two genes were found to be important for the production of ubiquinone, ubi A, which encodes p-hydroxybenzoate-polyprenyl pyrophosphate transferas e and ispB, which encodes polyprenyl pyrophosphate synthetase. We succ eeded in achieving a level of ubiquinone production three times that o f the wild-type cells by genetic engineering.