Escherichia coli biofactories as an alternative reservoir of human hydroxytyrosol metabolites

Hydroxytyrosol (HT), one of the most potent natural scavengers, has been recognised for its impressive biological and pharmacological properties. Pharmacokinetics, especially biotransformations in human organism is critical for HT pharmacological properties and mechanism of action [1]. Despite the plethora of studies available, its metabolic pathways for the elucidation of its activity haven’t been interpreted so far. Biotechnological approaches offer an attractive alternative strategy for HT production as well as diverse HT derivatives.

Thus, the scope of the present work was to investigate Escherichia coli biofactories engineered to produce HT using L-tyrosine/L-DOPA [2] for the recovery and identification of possible new HT metabolites. Therefore, a novel methodology was developed and implemented based on ACE extraction hyphenated at- line with a stepwise gradient CPC fractionation and prep-HPLC-DAD for further purification. This process resulted in 20 compounds belonging to various classes and their structure was identified by LC–HRMS/MS and NMR techniques. Amongst them, several comprised previously described HT human metabolites as well as novel ones. The proposed workflow is the first reported method that describes the direct isolation of pure HT metabolites from E. coli and their unambiguous identification. Also, this approach could aid in the elucidation of the bioengineering process of the bacteria, but most importantly could comprise a reservoir for human HT metabolites.

Funding ERDF, “RESEARCH–CREATE- INNOVATE”, OliveFeed (project code Τ2ΕΔΚ-03891).

 

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Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

• References

• 1 Nikou T.. et al. Nutrients 2022; 14: 3773
• 2 Trantas E.. et al. PLoS One 2019; 14: 1-23

Publication History

Article published online:
16 November 2023