Recent Progress on Chemical Production From Non-food Renewable Feedstocks Using Corynebacterium glutamicum

Abstract

Due to the non-renewable nature of fossil fuels, microbial fermentation is considered a sustainable approach for chemical production using glucose, xylose, menthol, and other complex carbon sources represented by lignocellulosic biomass. Among these, xylose, methanol, arabinose, glycerol, and other alternative feedstocks have been identified as superior non-food sustainable carbon substrates that can be effectively developed for microbe-based bioproduction. Corynebacterium glutamicum is a model gram-positive bacterium that has been extensively engineered to produce amino acids and other chemicals. Recently, in order to reduce production costs and avoid competition for human food, C. glutamicum has also been engineered to broaden its substrate spectrum. Strengthening endogenous metabolic pathways or assembling heterologous ones enables C. glutamicum to rapidly catabolize a multitude of carbon sources. This review summarizes recent progress in metabolic engineering of C. glutamicum toward a broad substrate spectrum and diverse chemical production. In particularly, utilization of lignocellulosic biomass-derived complex hybrid carbon source represents the futural direction for non-food renewable feedstocks was discussed.

From Brown Seaweed to a Sustainable Microbial Feedstock for the Production of Riboflavin

“…First, C. glutamicum is used in amino acid fermentation industry at a million-ton-scale ( Becker et al, 2018 ; Pérez-García and Wendisch, 2018 ). Moreover, C. glutamicum has successfully been engineered for the utilization of non-native carbon sources such as lignocellulosic sugars, glycerol as a by-product of the biodiesel process, or amino sugars from the fishing industry wastes ( Wendisch et al, 2016 ; Becker et al, 2018 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ). Finally, C. glutamicum lacks a complex carbon catabolite repression system, hence it can consume many substrates in parallel, unlike other biotechnology workhorses like Escherichia coli or Bacillus subtilis ( Görke and Stülke, 2008 ).…”

Rational Engineering of Non-Ubiquinone Containing Corynebacterium glutamicum for Enhanced Coenzyme Q10 Production

“…Here, we demonstrated the successful production of CoQ 10 from a wheat side stream-based hydrolysate that has been utilized previously for the production of 5-aminovalerate [ 40 ] and l -2-hydroxyglutarate [ 22 ]. As well as the wheat side stream, access to numerous monomeric and polymeric carbon sources has been established, e.g., xylose, arabinose, mannose, starch, lignocellulose, N -acetylglucosamine, and alginate, which can be derived from hydrolysates of sustainable second generation feedstocks such as spent sulfite liquor, Miscanthus biomass, brown seaweed, corn straw, rice straw, and shrimp waste [ 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 ].…”

Microbial Utilization of Next-Generation Feedstocks for the Biomanufacturing of Value-Added Chemicals and Food Ingredients

“…The growth rate of the evolved E. coli strain is comparable to the E. coli using the rGlyP as we discussed previously ( Kim et al, 2020 ). Also, Corynebacterium glutamicum is explored for methanol assimilation ( Zhang B. et al, 2020 ).…”