초록
An NADH dehydrogenase encoded by the nuo cluster was isolated and impaired by knocking out the nuoB gene in Enterobacter aerogenes to examine its effect on hydrogen production. Three nuoB-deleted mutant strains were constructed from the wild-type strain E. aerogenes IAM1183 and two recombinant strains, IAM1183-A (ΔhycA) and IAM1183-O (ΔhybO), from which the hycA and hybO genes had already been deleted previously, respectively. Compared with the performance of the wild-type strain, the overall hydrogen production of the mutants IAM1183-B (ΔnuoB), IAM1183-AB (ΔhycA/ΔnuoB) and IAM1183-BO (ΔhybO/ΔnuoB) was increased by 49.2%, 54.0%, and 52.4% in batch culture, respectively. The hydrogen yields from glucose by the three mutants IAM1183-B, IAM1183-AB, IAM1183-BO were 1.38, 1.49, and 1.39 mol H<SUB>2</SUB>/mol glucose, respectively, while it was 1.16 mol H<SUB>2</SUB>/mol glucose in the wild-type strain. Metabolic flux analysis indicated that all three mutants exhibited reduced fluxes to lactate production, and enhanced fluxes toward the generation of hydrogen, acetate, ethanol, succinate and 2,3-butanediol. Both the formate pathway and the NADH pathway contributed to increased hydrogen production in the mutant strains. The assay of 4 NADH-mediated enzyme activities (H<SUB>2</SUB>ase, LDH, ADH and BDDH) was in accordance with the redistributions of the metabolic fluxes in the mutant strains.