Development of Clostridium tyrobutyricum as a Microbial Cell Factory for the Production of Fuel and Chemical Intermediates From Lignocellulosic Feedstocks

Abstract

Microbial conversion of lignocellulosic substrates to fuel and platform chemical intermediates offers a sustainable route to establish a viable bioeconomy. However, such approaches face a series of key technical, economic, and sustainability hurdles, including: incomplete substrate utilization, lignocellulosic hydrolysate, and/or endproduct toxicity, inefficient product recovery, incompatible cultivation requirements, and insufficient productivity metrics. Development of a production host with native traits suitable for high productivity conversion of lignocellulosic substrates under process-relevant conditions offers a means to bypass the above-described hurdles and accelerate the development of microbial biocatalyst deployment. Clostridium tyrobutyricum, a native producer of short chain fatty acids, displays a series of characteristics that make it an ideal candidate for conversion of lignocellulosic substrates and thus represents a promising host for microbial production of diverse carboxylate-derived product suites. Herein, recent progress and future directions in the development of this bacterium as an industrial microbial cell factory, with emphases on the utilization of lignocellulosic substrates and metabolic engineering approaches, is reviewed.

Metabolic and Bioprocess Engineering of Clostridium tyrobutyricum for Butyl Butyrate Production on Xylose and Shrimp Shell Waste

“…However, the economic feasibility of butyrate production depends on the availability and cost of the feedstocks. Therefore, several renewable and low-cost feedstocks, such as glycerol, macroalgal biomass, food waste, and lignocellulosic biomass, have been investigated for their potential to support butyrate production by C. tyrobutyricum [13,14]. As the main carbon source released from the lignocellulosic biomass, xylose can be consumed by C. tyrobutyricum to achieve efficient fermentation [15].…”

Evaluation of engineered low-lignin poplar for conversion into advanced bioproducts

“…[23], and Clostridium sp. [24], as well several oleaginous yeast strains [25,26]. Among the latter, the carotenogenic basidiomycete Rhodosporidium toruloides is an emerging platform organism amenable to metabolic engineering for upgrading lignocellulosic hydrolysates [27].…”