Meta-Origami · Metabolic engineering of Ustilago trichophora: an isotope-assisted metabolomics approach for the improvement of malate production from glycerol

Metabolic engineering of Ustilago trichophora: an isotope-assisted metabolomics approach for the improvement of malate production from glycerol

Now more than ever is the era for affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy. A significant contribution from modern biotechnology into the efforts in reducing the dependence on fossil fuels is biodiesel. A report from the World Bioenergy Association showed that 160 billion liters of biodiesel were produced worldwide in 2018. However, biodiesel cannot compete with fossil-based diesel due to the high-cost production. 10% of the products in a common biodiesel production process is crude-glycerol, which is the main low-value by-product. Therefore, the development of glycerol conversion technologies is encouraged to take advantage of the whole biodiesel production process. Recently, the fungal family Ustilaginaceae with more than 600 species has attracted increasing attention due to their capability in using non-food biomass or bio-industrial waste streams as substrate to produce organic acids, glycolipids, sugar alcohols and other molecules of industrial interest. Among them, Ustilago trichophora was found to have the highest natural production of malate, one of the top value-added building block compounds from biomass (Department of Energy, USA), from glycerol. Further optimizations on this strain increased the malate titer to over 200 g/L with a maximum production rate of 1.8 g/L/h, which is the highest reported titer for microbial production. Of notes, even though a high titer of malate was achieved with U. trichophora, the yield was just approximately 30% of the theoretical maximum. These data suggest that if we can overcome the carbon lost during cultivation, U. trichophora will be a novel candidate for industrial production of malate, contributing directly to the valorization of crude glycerol. Therefore, the objective of project “Meta-Origami” is applying modern biotechnology methodologies to understand the metabolism of U. trichophora while using glycerol to produce malic acid. The results will guide ongoing efforts in metabolic engineering to maximize the performance of U. trichophora with respect to titer, productivity, and importantly yield of malic acid. A parallel goal of the MSCA Individual Fellowship is to foster the development of the individual researcher and the host institute.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз