Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are microbial storage polymers that attract interest as bioplastics. PHAs can be produced with open mixed cultures if a suitable enrichment step based on the ecological role of PHA is used. An acetate-fed sequencing batch reactor operated with 1 day biomass residence time and with feast-famine cycles of 12 h was used to enrich a mixed culture of PHA producers. In subsequent fed-batch experiments under growth limiting conditions, the enriched mixed culture produced PHA up to a cellular content of 89 wt % within 7.6 h (average rate of 1.2 g/g/h). The PHA produced from acetate was the homopolymer polyhydroxybutyrate. The culture was dominated by a Gammaproteobacterium that showed little similarity on 16S rRNA level with known bacteria (<90% sequence similarity). The mixed culture process for PHA production does not require aseptic conditions. Waste streams rather than pure substrates could be used as raw materials.

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In this study we investigated the use of lactate and a lactate/acetate mixture for enrichment of poly-3-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) producing mixed cultures. The mixed cultures were enriched in sequencing batch reactors (SBR) that established a feast-famine regime. The SBRs were operated under conditions that were previously shown to enable enrichment of a superior PHB producing strain on acetate (i.e., 12 h cycle length, 1 day SRT and 30°C). Two new mixed cultures were eventually enriched from activated sludge. The mixed culture enriched on lactate was dominated by a novel gammaproteobacterium. This enrichment can accumulate over 90 wt% PHB within 6 h, which is currently the best result reported for a bacterial culture in terms of the final PHB content and the biomass specific PHB production rate. The second mixed culture enriched on a mixture of acetate and lactate can produce up to 84 wt% PHB in just over 8 h. The predominant bacterial species in this culture were Plasticicumulans acidivorans and Thauera selenatis, which have both been reported to accumulate large amounts of PHB. The data suggest that P. acidivorans is a specialist on acetate conversion, whereas Thauera sp. is a specialist on lactate conversion. The main conclusion of this work is that the use of different substrates has a direct impact on microbial composition, but has no significant effect on the functionality of PHB production process.

The impact of temperature and cycle length on microbial competition between polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB)-producing populations enriched in feast-famine sequencing batch reactors (SBRs) was investigated at temperatures of 20 1C and 30 1C, and in a cycle length range of 1-18 h. In this study, the microbial community structure of the PHB-producing enrichments was found to be strongly dependent on temperature, but not on cycle length. Zoogloea and Plasticicumulans acidivorans dominated the SBRs operated at 20 1C and 30 1C, respectively. Both enrichments accumulated PHB more than 75% of cell dry weight. Short-term temperature change experiments revealed that P. acidivorans was more temperature sensitive as compared with Zoogloea. This is particularly true for the PHB degradation, resulting in incomplete PHB degradation in P. acidivorans at 20 1C. Incomplete PHB degradation limited biomass growth and allowed Zoogloea to outcompete P. acidivorans. The PHB content at the end of the feast phase correlated well with the cycle length at a constant solid retention time (SRT). These results suggest that to establish enrichment with the capacity to store a high fraction of PHB, the number of cycles per SRT should be minimized independent of the temperature.

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To obtain insight into the genome-wide transcriptional response of heterologous carotenoid production in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the transcriptome of two different S. cerevisiae strains overexpressing carotenogenic genes from the yeast Xanthophyllomyces dendrorhous grown in carbon-limited chemostat cultures was analysed. The strains exhibited different absolute carotenoid levels as well as different intermediate profiles. These discrepancies were further sustained by the difference of the transcriptional response exhibited by the two strains. Transcriptome analysis of the strain producing high carotenoid levels resulted in specific induction of genes involved in pleiotropic drug resistance (PDR). These genes encode ABC-type and major facilitator transporters which are reported to be involved in secretion of toxic compounds out of cells. β-Carotene was found to be secreted when sunflower oil was added to the medium of S. cerevisiae cells producing high levels of carotenoids, which was not observed when added to X. dendrorhous cells. Deletion of pdr10, one of the induced ABC transporters, decreased the transformation efficiency of a plasmid containing carotenogenic genes. The few transformants that were obtained had decreased growth rates and lower carotenoid production levels compared to a pdr5 deletion and a reference strain transformed with the same genes. Our results suggest that production of high amounts of carotenoids in S. cerevisiae leads to membrane stress, in which Pdr10 might play an important role, and a cellular response to secrete carotenoids out of the cell.