(515am) Analyses and Suppression of Acetate Formation for Development of Efficient Biorefining Process by Growth-Arrested Corynebacteria

Biomass is potentially an ideal sustainable resource of renewable energy and industrial chemicals of the future. Recent advances made in production of chemicals from biomass-derived sugars by bacterial fermentation have started to enable the exploitation of this potential. One limiting factor, though, remains the formation of acetate as a by-product of bacterial sugar metabolism. Acetate production lowers yield by reducing not only the total fermentable substrate available but also the efficacy of fermentation reactions.

We previously demonstrated the genetic modifications necessary for Corynebacterium glutamicum cells to function as high density catalysts for the production of lactate and succinate under oxygen-deprived conditions^{1, 2}. Here we identified and systematically disrupted the relevant genes as a means to inactivate acetate-producing pathways in C. glutamicum. We consequently evaluated the effect of the gene disruptions on acetate formation by C. glutamicum under oxygen-deprived conditions.

This work was financially supported in part by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), Japan.

1) J. Mol. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 7: 182-196. 2004. 2) Appl. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 68: 475-480. 2005.