Plasmid construction

For the even-chain monomer supply, the construction of plasmid pQQ05 has been previously described [23]. Briefly, the genes yqeF, fadB, phaJ1_Pa, ter and phaC2_Pa were all cloned and ligated into the corresponding sites of pTrc99a which were cut with the same restriction enzymes stepwise to generate plasmid pQQ05.

The construction of odd-chain monomer generation pathway was as follows. The codon-optimized prpP gene was cloned into the pBBR1MCS2 vector between the KpnI and BamHI sites to construct the plasmid of pZQ01. Later, in order to form the plasmid pBBR1MCS2-acs, namely pZQ02, the acs gene amplified via polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using E. coli MG1655 genomic DNA (gDNA) as template was also inserted into the pBBR1MCS2. The prpE and pct fragments amplified from R. eutropha H16 gDNA with primers prpE-F/prpE-R and pct-F/pct-R were separately ligated into the pBBR1MCS2 to yield the plasmids pZQ03 and pZQ04. Subsequently, co-expression of two genes prpP and acs, prpP and prpE, prpP and pct in the pBBR1MCS2 was utilized to form the plasmids pZQ05, pZQ06 and pZQ07, respectively. All of the genes were under the control of the lac promoter with separated ribosomal binding site located upstream of each gene to facilitate the translation. The R. eutropha H16 template used for these PCR reactions was isolated using the TIANamp Bacterial DNA Kit (TIANGEN BIOTECH, China). The primers used to amplify different fragments for cloning reactions are listed in Additional file 1: Table S1.

In all cases, PCR was performed using an S1000 Thermal Cycler (Bio-Rad, USA). PrimeSTAR HS DNA polymerase was purchased from Takara (Tokyo, Japan), restriction endonucleases were from Fermentas/Thermo Scientific (Pittsburgh, USA), and T4 DNA ligase was from New England Biolabs (Ipswich, USA). Propagated plasmids were prepared by TIANGEN Plasmid Mini Extraction Kit (TIANGEN BIOTECH, China), and restriction enzyme-digested products were purified using an E.Z.N.A.™ Gel Extraction Kit (Omega, USA). DNA sequencing of all constructed plasmids were performed by Liuhe BGI Tech Co. Ltd (Beijing, China). All of the constructed plasmids were transformed into the strain LZ05 and the optimum double plasmids were then transformed into the strain LZ08 according to standard procedures [39].