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Metabolic engineering of a thermophilic bacterium to produce ethanol at high yield.

ABSTRACT: We report engineering Thermoanaerobacterium saccharolyticum, a thermophilic anaerobic bacterium that ferments xylan and biomass-derived sugars, to produce ethanol at high yield. Knockout of genes involved in organic acid formation (acetate kinase, phosphate acetyltransferase, and L-lactate dehydrogenase) resulted in a strain able to produce ethanol as the only detectable organic product and substantial changes in electron flow relative to the wild type. Ethanol formation in the engineered strain (ALK2) utilizes pyruvate:ferredoxin oxidoreductase with electrons transferred from ferredoxin to NAD(P), a pathway different from that in previously described microbes with a homoethanol fermentation. The homoethanologenic phenotype was stable for >150 generations in continuous culture. The growth rate of strain ALK2 was similar to the wild-type strain, with a reduction in cell yield proportional to the decreased ATP availability resulting from acetate kinase inactivation. Glucose and xylose are co-utilized and utilization of mannose and arabinose commences before glucose and xylose are exhausted. Using strain ALK2 in simultaneous hydrolysis and fermentation experiments at 50 degrees C allows a 2.5-fold reduction in cellulase loading compared with using Saccharomyces cerevisiae at 37 degrees C. The maximum ethanol titer produced by strain ALK2, 37 g/liter, is the highest reported thus far for a thermophilic anaerobe, although further improvements are desired and likely possible. Our results extend the frontier of metabolic engineering in thermophilic hosts, have the potential to significantly lower the cost of cellulosic ethanol production, and support the feasibility of further cost reductions through engineering a diversity of host organisms.

SUBMITTER: Shaw AJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2544529 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Metabolic engineering of a thermophilic bacterium to produce ethanol at high yield.

Shaw A Joe AJ Podkaminer Kara K KK Desai Sunil G SG Bardsley John S JS Rogers Stephen R SR Thorne Philip G PG Hogsett David A DA Lynd Lee R LR

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20080908 37

We report engineering Thermoanaerobacterium saccharolyticum, a thermophilic anaerobic bacterium that ferments xylan and biomass-derived sugars, to produce ethanol at high yield. Knockout of genes involved in organic acid formation (acetate kinase, phosphate acetyltransferase, and L-lactate dehydrogenase) resulted in a strain able to produce ethanol as the only detectable organic product and substantial changes in electron flow relative to the wild type. Ethanol formation in the engineered strain ...[more]

PMID: 18779592

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Project description:Background:Cellulosic biomass is a promising resource for bioethanol production. However, various sugars in plant biomass hydrolysates including cellodextrins, cellobiose, glucose, xylose, and arabinose, are poorly fermented by microbes. The commonly used ethanol-producing microbe Saccharomyces cerevisiae can usually only utilize glucose, although metabolically engineered strains that utilize xylose have been developed. Direct fermentation of cellobiose could avoid glucose repression during biomass fermentation, but applications of an engineered cellobiose-utilizing S. cerevisiae are still limited because of its long lag phase. Bioethanol production from biomass-derived sugars by a cellulolytic filamentous fungus would have many advantages for the biorefinery industry. Results:We selected Myceliophthora thermophila, a cellulolytic thermophilic filamentous fungus for metabolic engineering to produce ethanol from glucose and cellobiose. Ethanol production was increased by 57% from glucose but not cellobiose after introduction of ScADH1 into the wild-type (WT) strain. Further overexpression of a glucose transporter GLT-1 or the cellodextrin transport system (CDT-1/CDT-2) from N. crassa increased ethanol production by 131% from glucose or by 200% from cellobiose, respectively. Transcriptomic analysis of the engineered cellobiose-utilizing strain and WT when grown on cellobiose showed that genes involved in oxidation-reduction reactions and the stress response were downregulated, whereas those involved in protein biosynthesis were upregulated in this effective ethanol production strain. Turning down the expression of pyc gene results the final engineered strain with the ethanol production was further increased by 23%, reaching up to 11.3 g/L on cellobiose. Conclusions:This is the first attempt to engineer the cellulolytic fungus M. thermophila to produce bioethanol from biomass-derived sugars such as glucose and cellobiose. The ethanol production can be improved about 4 times up to 11 grams per liter on cellobiose after a couple of genetic engineering. These results show that M. thermophila is a promising platform for bioethanol production from cellulosic materials in the future.

Project description:Background:Fumaric acid is widely used in food and pharmaceutical industries and is recognized as a versatile industrial chemical feedstock. Increasing concerns about energy and environmental problems have resulted in a focus on fumaric acid production by microbial fermentation via bioconversion of renewable feedstocks. Filamentous fungi are the predominant microorganisms used to produce organic acids, including fumaric acid, and most studies to date have focused on Rhizopus species. Thermophilic filamentous fungi have many advantages for the production of compounds by industrial fermentation. However, no previous studies have focused on fumaric acid production by thermophilic fungi. Results:We explored the feasibility of producing fumarate by metabolically engineering Myceliophthora thermophila using the CRISPR/Cas9 system. Screening of fumarases suggested that the fumarase from Candida krusei was the most suitable for efficient production of fumaric acid in M. thermophila. Introducing the C. krusei fumarase into M. thermophila increased the titer of fumaric acid by threefold. To further increase fumarate production, the intracellular fumarate digestion pathway was disrupted. After deletion of the two fumarate reductase and the mitochondrial fumarase genes of M. thermophila, the resulting strain exhibited a 2.33-fold increase in fumarate titer. Increasing the pool size of malate, the precursor of fumaric acid, significantly increased the final fumaric acid titer. Finally, disruption of the malate-aspartate shuttle increased the intracellular malate content by 2.16-fold and extracellular fumaric acid titer by 42%, compared with that of the parental strain. The strategic metabolic engineering of multiple genes resulted in a final strain that could produce up to 17 g/L fumaric acid from glucose in a fed-batch fermentation process. Conclusions:This is the first metabolic engineering study on the production of fumaric acid by the thermophilic filamentous fungus M. thermophila. This cellulolytic fungal platform provides a promising method for the sustainable and efficient-cost production of fumaric acid from lignocellulose-derived carbon sources in the future.

Project description:BackgroundGlycerol, whose formation contributes to cellular redox balancing and osmoregulation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is an important by-product of yeast-based bioethanol production. Replacing the glycerol pathway by an engineered pathway for NAD+-dependent acetate reduction has been shown to improve ethanol yields and contribute to detoxification of acetate-containing media. However, the osmosensitivity of glycerol non-producing strains limits their applicability in high-osmolarity industrial processes. This study explores engineering strategies for minimizing glycerol production by acetate-reducing strains, while retaining osmotolerance.ResultsGPD2 encodes one of two S. cerevisiae isoenzymes of NAD+-dependent glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (G3PDH). Its deletion in an acetate-reducing strain yielded a fourfold lower glycerol production in anaerobic, low-osmolarity cultures but hardly affected glycerol production at high osmolarity. Replacement of both native G3PDHs by an archaeal NADP+-preferring enzyme, combined with deletion of ALD6, yielded an acetate-reducing strain the phenotype of which resembled that of a glycerol-negative gpd1Δ gpd2Δ strain in low-osmolarity cultures. This strain grew anaerobically at high osmolarity (1 mol L-1 glucose), while consuming acetate and producing virtually no extracellular glycerol. Its ethanol yield in high-osmolarity cultures was 13% higher than that of an acetate-reducing strain expressing the native glycerol pathway.ConclusionsDeletion of GPD2 provides an attractive strategy for improving product yields of acetate-reducing S. cerevisiae strains in low, but not in high-osmolarity media. Replacement of the native yeast G3PDHs by a heterologous NADP+-preferring enzyme, combined with deletion of ALD6, virtually eliminated glycerol production in high-osmolarity cultures while enabling efficient reduction of acetate to ethanol. After further optimization of growth kinetics, this strategy for uncoupling the roles of glycerol formation in redox homeostasis and osmotolerance can be applicable for improving performance of industrial strains in high-gravity acetate-containing processes.

Project description:BackgroundIn the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is widely applied for industrial bioethanol production, uptake of hexoses is mediated by transporters with a facilitated diffusion mechanism. In anaerobic cultures, a higher ethanol yield can be achieved when transport of hexoses is proton-coupled, because of the lower net ATP yield of sugar dissimilation. In this study, the facilitated diffusion transport system for hexose sugars of S. cerevisiae was replaced by hexose-proton symport.ResultsIntroduction of heterologous glucose- or fructose-proton symporters in an hxt0 yeast background strain (derived from CEN.PK2-1C) restored growth on the corresponding sugar under aerobic conditions. After applying an evolutionary engineering strategy to enable anaerobic growth, the hexose-proton symporter-expressing strains were grown in anaerobic, hexose-limited chemostats on synthetic defined medium, which showed that the biomass yield of the resulting strains was decreased by 44.0-47.6%, whereas the ethanol yield had increased by up to 17.2% (from 1.51 to 1.77 mol mol hexose-1) compared to an isogenic strain expressing the hexose uniporter HXT5. To apply this strategy to increase the ethanol yield on sucrose, we constructed a platform strain in which all genes encoding hexose transporters, disaccharide transporters and disaccharide hydrolases were deleted, after which a combination of a glucose-proton symporter, fructose-proton symporter and extracellular invertase (SUC2) were introduced. After evolution, the resulting strain exhibited a 16.6% increased anaerobic ethanol yield (from 1.51 to 1.76 mol mol hexose equivalent-1) and 46.6% decreased biomass yield on sucrose.ConclusionsThis study provides a proof-of-concept for the replacement of the endogenous hexose transporters of S. cerevisiae by hexose-proton symport, and the concomitant decrease in ATP yield, to greatly improve the anaerobic yield of ethanol on sugar. Moreover, the sugar-negative platform strain constructed in this study acts as a valuable starting point for future studies on sugar transport or development of cell factories requiring specific sugar transport mechanisms.

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Metabolic engineering of a thermophilic bacterium to produce ethanol at high yield.

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Metabolic engineering of a thermophilic bacterium to produce ethanol at high yield.

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