In an investigation performed by Luo et al., Escherichia coli strains were utilized to examine how the metabolism of propionyl-CoA could potentially lead to the production of 3-hydroxypropionic acid (3-HP). It was shown that a mutation in a key gene involved in the pathway, succinate CoA-transferase, led to a significant increase in 3-HP. However, this is still a developing field and information on this topic is limited.