An Efficient Method for Production of Uridine 5′-Diphospho-N-Acetylglucosamine

Uridine 5'-diphospho-N-acetylglucosamine (UDP-GlcNAc) has been synthesized by a yeast-based method from 5'-UMP and glucosamine, in which yeast cells catalyze the conversion of 5'-UMP to 5'-UTP and provide enzymes involved in UDP-GlcNAc synthesis using 5'-UTP and glucosamine as substrates. However, this conventional method is not suitable for practical production of UDP-GlcNAc because of the low yield of the product. We found that the yqgR gene product of Bacillus subtilis, which has been identified as a glucokinase, can catalyze the phosphorylation of N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) to give GlcNAc-6-phosphate, an intermediate of UDP-GlcNAc biosynthesis. The addition of the yqgR gene product to the yeast-based reaction system enabled us to synthesize UDP-GlcNAc using GlcNAc in place of glucosamine. The addition of two enzymes, GlcNAc-phosphate mutase and UDP-GlcNAc pyrophosphorylase, increased the yield of UDP-GlcNAc. Using this novel method, UDP-GlcNAc was produced at an amount of 78 mM from 100 mM 5'-UMP and 100 mM GlcNAc.