High-Level Ferulic Acid Production in Engineered Yeast Enables Discovery and Biosynthetic Application of Novel Enzymes from Piper nigrum.

Ferulic acid (FA), a methoxy-substituted hydroxycinnamic acid, serves as a pivotal precursor for pharmaceuticals and plant natural products, yet its bioproduction faces challenges from competitive byproduct synthesis and inefficient methylation. To address these limitations, we first redirected carbon flux toward FA from fusel and styrenes by knocking out transcriptional activator ARO80 and the FA degradation pathway. Combined with the enhanced cofactor S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) regeneration and multicopy expression of rate-limiting methyltransferase, the FA titer reached 533.1 ± 51.8 mg/L in shake flasks, representing the highest level reported in eukaryotic hosts. Leveraging this platform, we attained a curcumin titer of 1.52 mg/L by simply introducing a heterogeneous pathway. Additionally, a novel styrylpyrone synthase (PnPKS2) and N-acyltransferase (PnNAT5) from Piper nigrum were identified and applied to the biosynthesis of 11-methoxy-bisnoryangonin and feruloyl-piperidine. Our work establishes a high-yielding yeast chassis for FA-derived natural products and expands the enzymatic toolbox for plant metabolite diversification.