Efficient Conversion of Glycerol to Ethanol by an Engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae Strain

Author(s):  
Sadat M. R. Khattab ◽  
Takashi Watanabe

Glycerol is an eco-friendly solvent that enhances plant biomass decomposition via glycerolysis in many pretreatment methods. Nonetheless, inefficient conversion of glycerol to ethanol by natural Saccharomyces cerevisiae limits its use in these processes. Here, we have developed an efficient glycerol-converting yeast strain by genetically modifying the oxidation of cytosolic nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) by an O 2 -dependent dynamic shuttle and abolishing both glycerol phosphorylation and biosynthesis in S. cerevisiae D452-2 strain, as well as vigorous expression of whole genes in the DHA-pathway ( Candid utilis glycerol facilitator, Ogataea polymorpha glycerol dehydrogenase, endogenous dihydroxyacetone kinase, and triosephosphate isomerase). The engineered strain showed conversion efficiencies (CE) up to 0.49 g ethanol/g glycerol (98% of theoretical CE), with production rate >1 g/L −1 h −1 when glycerol was supplemented in a single fed-batch fermentation in a rich medium. Furthermore, the engineered strain converted a mixture of glycerol and glucose into bioethanol (>86 g/L) with 92.8% CE. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest reported titer of bioethanol produced from glycerol and glucose. Notably, we developed a glycerol-utilizing transformant from parent strain, which cannot utilize glycerol as a sole carbon source. The developed strain converted glycerol to ethanol with a productivity of 0.44 g/L −1 h −1 on minimal medium under semi-aerobic conditions. Our findings will promote the utilization of glycerol in eco-friendly biorefineries and integrate bioethanol and plant-oil industries. IMPORTANCE With the development of efficient lignocellulosic biorefineries, glycerol has attracted attention as an eco-friendly biomass-derived solvent that can enhance the dissociation of lignin and cell wall polysaccharides during the pretreatment process. Co-conversion of glycerol with the sugars released from biomass after glycerolysis increases the resources for ethanol production and lowers the burden of component separation. However, low conversion efficiency from glycerol and sugars limits the industrial application of this process. Therefore, the generation of an efficient glycerol-fermenting yeast will promote the applicability of integrated biorefineries. Hence, metabolic flux control in yeast grown on glycerol will lead to the generation of cell factories that produce chemicals, which will boost biodiesel and bioethanol industries. Additionally, the use of glycerol-fermenting yeast will reduce global warming and generation of agricultural waste, leading to the establishment of a sustainable society.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sadat M. R. Khattab ◽  
Takashi Watanabe

ABSTRACTGlycerol is an eco-friendly solvent enhancing plant-biomass decomposition through a glycerolysis process in many pretreatment methods. Nonetheless, the lack of efficient conversion of glycerol by natural Saccharomyces cerevisiae restrains many of these scenarios. Here we outline the complete strategy for the generation of efficient glycerol fermenting yeast by rewriting the oxidation of cytosolic nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) by O2-dependent dynamic shuttle while abolishing both glycerol phosphorylation and biosynthesis pathways. By following a vigorous glycerol oxidative pathway, the engineered strain demonstrated augmentation in conversion efficiency (CE) reach up to 0.49g-ethanol/g-glycerol—98% of theoretical conversion—with production rate >1 g/L-1h-1 when supplementing glycerol as a single fed-batch on a rich-medium. Furthermore, the engineered strain showed a new capability toward ferment a mixture of glycerol and glucose with producing >86 g/L of bioethanol with 92.8% of the CE. To our knowledge, this is the highest ever reported titer in this regard. Notably, this strategy flipped our ancestral yeast from non-growth on glycerol, on the minimal medium, to a fermenting strain with productivities 0.25-0.5 g/L-1h-1 and 84-78% of CE, respectively and 90% of total conversions to the products. The findings in metabolic engineering here may release the limitations of utilizing glycerol in several eco-friendly biorefinery approaches.IMPORTANCEWith the avenues for achieving efficient lignocellulosic biorefinery scenarios, glycerol gained keen attention as an eco-friendly biomass-derived solvent for enhancing the dissociation of lignin and cell wall polysaccharides during pretreatment process. Co-fermentation of glycerol with the released sugars from biomass after the glycerolysis expands the resource for ethanol production and release from the burden of component separation. Titer productivities are one of the main obstacles for industrial applications of this process. Therefore, the generation of highly efficient glycerol fermenting yeast significantly promotes the applicability of the integrated biorefineries scenario. Besides, the glycerol is an important carbon resource for producing chemicals. Hence, the metabolic flux control of yeast from glycerol contributes to generation of cell factory producing chemicals from glycerol, promoting the association between biodiesel and bioethanol industries. Thus, this study will shed light on solving the problems of global warming and agricultural wastes, leading to establishment of the sustainable society.


Author(s):  
Qiyu Gao ◽  
Luan Wang ◽  
Maosen Zhang ◽  
Yongjun Wei ◽  
Wei Lin

Terpenoids are a large diverse group of natural products which play important roles in plant metabolic activities. Monoterpenoids are the main components of plant essential oils and the active components of some traditional Chinese medicinal herbs. Some monoterpenoids are widely used in medicine, cosmetics and other industries, and they are mainly obtained by plant biomass extraction methods. These plant extraction methods have some problems, such as low efficiency, unstable quality, and high cost. Moreover, the monoterpenoid production from plant cannot satisfy the growing monoterpenoids demand. The development of metabolic engineering, protein engineering and synthetic biology provides an opportunity to produce large amounts of monoterpenoids eco-friendly using microbial cell factories. This mini-review covers current monoterpenoids production using Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The monoterpenoids biosynthetic pathways, engineering of key monoterpenoids biosynthetic enzymes, and current monoterpenoids production using S. cerevisiae were summarized. In the future, metabolically engineered S. cerevisiae may provide one possible green and sustainable strategy for monoterpenoids supply.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Krahmer ◽  
Ammad Abbas ◽  
Virginie Mengin ◽  
Hirofumi Ishihara ◽  
Thiago A Moraes ◽  
...  

AbstractThe phytochromes (phys) photoreceptors are known to be major regulators of plastic growth responses to vegetation shade. Recent reports have begun to uncover an important role for phys in carbon resource management. Our earlier work showed that phy mutants had a distinct metabolic profile with elevated levels of metabolites including TCA intermediates, amino acids and sugars. Here we show that in seedlings phy regulates the balance between glucose and starch. Multi-allele phy mutants have excess glucose and low starch levels, which is conducive to hypocotyl elongation. 13C-CO2 labelling demonstrates that metabolic flux balance in adult plants is markedly altered in phy mutants. Phytochrome reduces synthesis rates of stress metabolites, including raffinose and proline and several typical stress-induced biosynthetic genes related to these metabolites show higher expression in phy mutants.Since growth and metabolism are typically inter-connected, we investigated why phy mutants have severely reduced biomass. Quantification of carbon fixation, biomass accumulation, and 13C labelling of cell wall polysaccharides established that relative growth rate is impaired in multi allele phy mutants for the first 2.5 weeks after germination but equivalent to the WT thereafter. Mathematical modelling predicts that the altered growth dynamics and final biomass deficit can be explained by the smaller cotyledon size of the multiple phy mutants. This indicates that the established role of phy in promoting seedling establishment has enduring effects that govern adult plant biomass.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takashi Watanabe ◽  
Sadat M. R. Khattab

Glycerol is an eco-friendly solvent that enhances plant biomass decomposition via glycerolysis in many pretreatment methods. Nonetheless, the lack of efficient conversion of glycerol by natural Saccharomyces cerevisiae hinders its use in these methods. Here, we have aimed to develop a complete strategy for the generation of efficient glycerol-converting yeast by modifying the oxidation of cytosolic nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) by an O2-dependent dynamic shuttle, while abolishing both glycerol phosphorylation and biosynthesis. By following a vigorous glycerol oxidation pathway, the engineered strain increased the conversion efficiency (CE) to up to 0.49 g ethanol/g glycerol (98% of theoretical CE), with production rate > 1 g×L×h, when glycerol was supplemented in a single fed-batch fermentation in a rich medium. Furthermore, the engineered strain fermented a mixture of glycerol and glucose, producing > 86 g/L bioethanol with 92.8% CE. To our knowledge, this is the highest ever reported titer in this field. Notably, this strategy changed conventional yeast from a non-grower on minimal medium containing glycerol to a fermenting strain with productivity of 0.25-0.5 g×L×h and 84-78% CE, which converted 90% of the substrate to products. Our findings may improve the utilization of glycerol in several eco-friendly biorefinery approaches.


2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (6) ◽  
pp. 1363-1366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefania Daniela Bran ◽  
Petre Chipurici ◽  
Mariana Bran ◽  
Alexandru Vlaicu

This paper has aimed at evaluating the concentration of bioethanol obtained using sunflower stem as natural support, molasses as carbon source and Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast in a continuous flow reactor. The natural support was tested to investigate the immobilization/growth of S. cerevisiae yeast. The concentration of bioethanol produced by fermentation was analyzed by gas chromatography using two methods: aqueous solutions and extraction in organic phase. The CO2 flow obtained during the fermentation process was considered to estimate when the yeast was deactivated. The laboratory experiments have highlighted that the use of plant-based wastes to bioconversion in ethanol could be a non-pollutant and sustainable alternative.


2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-361
Author(s):  
A. A. Saleh ◽  
S. Hamdan ◽  
N. Annaluru ◽  
S. Watanabe ◽  
M. R. Rahman ◽  
...  

Agricultural waste biomass has already been transferred to bioethanol and used as energy related products, although many issues such as efficiency and productivity still to be overcome. In this study, the protein engineering was applied to generate enzymes with completely reversed coenzyme specificity and developed recombinant yeasts containing those engineered enzymes for construction of an efficient biomass-ethanol conversion system. Recombinant yeasts were constructed with the genes encoding a wild type xylose reductase (XR) and the protein engineered xylitol dehydrogenase (XDH) (with NADP) of Pichia stipitis.  These recombinant yeasts were characterized based on the enzyme activity and fermentation ability of xylose to ethanol. The protein engineered enzymes were expressed significantly in Saccharomyces cerevisiae as judged by the enzyme activity in vitro. Ethanol fermentation was measured in batch culture under anaerobic conditions. The significant enhancement was found in Y-ARS strain, in which NADP+-dependent XDH was expressed; 85% decrease of unfavorable xylitol excretion with 26% increased ethanol production, when compared with the reference strain expressing the wild-type XDH.  Keywords: Agricultural waste biomass; Protein engineering; Xylitol dehydrogenase; Xylose-fermentation; Eethanol production. © 2010 JSR Publications. ISSN: 2070-0237 (Print); 2070-0245 (Online). All rights reserved. DOI: 10.3329/jsr.v2i2.2882               J. Sci. Res. 2 (2), 351-361 (2010) 


Author(s):  
V. S. Boltovsky

Prospects for the development of hydrolysis production are determined by the relevance of industrial use of plant biomass to replace the declining reserves of fossil organic raw materials and increasing demand for ethanol, especially for its use as automobile fuel, protein-containing feed additives that compensate for protein deficiency in feed production, and other products. Based on the review of the research results presented in the scientific literature, the analysis of modern methods of liquid-phase acid hydrolysis of cellulose and various types of plant raw materials, including those that differ from traditional ones, is performed. The main directions of increasing its efficiency through the use of new catalytic systems and process conditions are identified. It is shown that the most promising methods for obtaining monosaccharides in hydrolytic processing of cellulose and microcrystalline cellulose, pentosan-containing agricultural waste and wood, are methods for carrying out the process at elevated and supercritical temperatures (high-temperature hydrolysis), the use of new types of solid-acid catalysts and ionic liquids. 


Author(s):  
Zhi-Jiao Sun ◽  
Jia-Zhang Lian ◽  
Li Zhu ◽  
Yi-Qi Jiang ◽  
Guo-Si Li ◽  
...  

Ergosterol, a terpenoid compound produced by fungi, is an economically important metabolite serving as the direct precursor of steroid drugs. Herein, ergsosterol biosynthetic pathway modification combined with storage capacity enhancement was proposed to synergistically improve the production of ergosterol in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. S. cerevisiae strain S1 accumulated the highest amount of ergosterol [7.8 mg/g dry cell weight (DCW)] among the wild-type yeast strains tested and was first selected as the host for subsequent metabolic engineering studies. Then, the push and pull of ergosterol biosynthesis were engineered to increase the metabolic flux, overexpression of the sterol acyltransferase gene ARE2 increased ergosterol content to 10 mg/g DCW and additional overexpression of a global regulatory factor allele (UPC2-1) increased the ergosterol content to 16.7 mg/g DCW. Furthermore, considering the hydrophobicity sterol esters and accumulation in lipid droplets, the fatty acid biosynthetic pathway was enhanced to expand the storage pool for ergosterol. Overexpression of ACC1 coding for the acetyl-CoA carboxylase increased ergosterol content from 16.7 to 20.7 mg/g DCW. To address growth inhibition resulted from premature accumulation of ergosterol, auto-inducible promoters were employed to dynamically control the expression of ARE2, UPC2-1, and ACC1. Consequently, better cell growth led to an increase of ergosterol content to 40.6 mg/g DCW, which is 4.2-fold higher than that of the starting strain. Finally, a two-stage feeding strategy was employed for high-density cell fermentation, with an ergosterol yield of 2986.7 mg/L and content of 29.5 mg/g DCW. This study provided an effective approach for the production of ergosterol and other related terpenoid molecules.


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