Heat-resistant microbial hosts are required for bioprocess development using high cell density cultivations at the industrial scale. We report that the thermotolerance of Escherichia coli can be enhanced by overexpressing ybeD, which was known to encode a hypothetical protein of unknown function. In the wild-type E. coli BL21(DE3), ybeD transcription level increased over five-fold when temperature was increased from 37°C to either 42°C or 46°C. To study the function of ybeD, a deletion strain and an overexpression strain were constructed. At 46°C, in comparison to the wild type, the ybeD-deletion reduced cell growth half-fold, and the ybeD-overexpression promoted cell growth over two-fold. The growth enhancement by ybeD-overexpression was much more pronounced at 46°C than 37°C. The ybeD-overexpression was also effective in other E. coli strains of MG1655, W3110, DH10B, and BW25113. These findings reveal that ybeD gene plays an important role in enduring high-temperature stress, and that ybeD-overexpression can be a prospective strategy to develop thermotolerant microbial hosts.
Keywords: Escherichia coli; Heat shock protein; Thermotolerance; ybeD.