 Such a process of methyl branching of the fatty acids causes them to act as sinks for accumulating propion 

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.