The biorefinery concept makes use of renewable lignocellulosic biomass to produce sustainable commodities. A synthetic microbial consortium can enable the simultaneous utilization of sugars such as glucose and xylose to produce biochemicals, where each consortium member converts one sugar into the target product. In this study, woody biomass was used to generate glucose and xylose after pretreatment with 20% (w/v) sulfuric acid and 60 min reaction time. We compared several strategies for detoxification with charcoal and sodium borohydride treatments to improve the fermentability of this hydrolysate for the production of the growth-associated product pyruvate. The highest pyruvate yield on xylose of 0.8 g/g was found using pH 6 charcoal-treated hydrolysate. Additionally, a consortium of two engineered <i>E. coli</i> strains converted the mixture of glucose and xylose in batch studies to 12.8 ± 2.7 g/L pyruvate in 13 h. These results demonstrate that lignocellulosic biomass can be used to produce growth-related products after employing suitable detoxification strategies.

Pyruvate production of pretreated and detoxified wood hydrolysates by a <i>Escherichia coli</i> consortium

ACS Fall 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.

Pyruvate production of pretreated and detoxified wood hydrolysates by a Escherichia coli consortium