nadp than nad while the wild type control mg1655 pdhc29 preferred nad over nadp table 2 to replace native e coli gapdh gene gapa with gapb pdhc29 gapb was transformed in a gapa null mutant mg1655 gapa tn which has a transposon insertion in p1 promoter region of gapa and lost gapa activity 7 this recombinant strain was later introduced with ptrc99a chmo pkl9 lyco or ptrc99a caa43 to test nadph availability we have found that overexpression of nadp dependent gapb or both gapb and nadk greatly increased nadph availability in the cell which in turn resulted in higher yield of nadph dependent compounds the level of cofactor can go up 10 20 or more fold over the pre modified bacteria to validate this novel system the resulting recombinant e coli strains were tested in reporting systems that produce nadph dependent compounds the first reporting system was the cyclohexanone monooxygenase chmo from acinetobacter sp ncib 9871 chmo catalyzes baeyer villiger bv reactions and oxidizes cyclohexanones into u03b4 and u03b5 caprolactones with high enantioselectivity gt 95 using nadph as cofactor and thereby gives a direct measurement of nadph availability in the cell under aerobic conditions 3 the second reporting system we used involved production of lycopene under aerobic conditions lycopene has been produced in e coli using crtebi operon from erwinia herbicola 4 containing genes crte crtb and crti together with certain native genes 16 moles of nadph are required to produce 1 mole of lycopene the third reporting system we have developed is an anaerobic system which utilizes the 2 haloacrylate reductase caa43 from soil bacterium burkholderia sp ws this enzyme reduces 2 chloroacrylate to 2 chloropropionic acid while oxidizing nadph to nadp 5 in the monooxygenase assay we found that overexpression of gapb greatly increased consumption.