Patent ID: 7172886

Claim:
A method for synthesizing an isoprenoid or an isoprenoid precursor via a mevalonace pathway in a host cell, wherein the method comprises: i) culturing a transformed host cell in a suitable medium, wherein the transformed host cell is a prokaryote that does not normally synthesize isopentenyl pyrophosphate (IPP) through the mevalonate pathway, and wherein the host cell comprises one or more nucleic acids heterologous to the host cell, wherein the one or more heterologous nucleic acids comprises nucleotide sequences that encode two or more mevalonate pathway enzymes, wherein said two or more mevalonate pathway enzymes comprises an enzyme that condenses two molecules of acctyl-CoA to acetoacetyl-CoA as the first step in the synthesis of the isoprenoid or isoprenoid precursor and one or more additional mevalonate pathway enzymes selected from: (a) an enzyme that condenses acetoacetyl-CoA with acetyl-CoA to form HMG-CoA; (b) an enzyme that converts HMG-CoA to mevalonate; (c) an enzyme that phosphorylates mevalonate to mevalonate 5-phosphate; (d) an enzyme that converts mevalonate 5-phosphate to mevalonate 5-pyrophosphate; and (e) an enzyme that converts mevalonate 5-pyrophosphate to isopentenyl pyrophosphate, said culturing providing for production of the two or more enzymes, resulting in synthesis of said isoprenoid or isoprenoid precursor in a recoverable amount of at least about 1 mg/L; and ii) recovering the produced isoprenoid or isoprenoid precursor.