Corynebacterium glutamicum is well known as an important industrial amino acid producer. For a few years, its ability to produce organic acids, under micro-aerobic or anaerobic conditions was demonstrated. This study is focused on the identification of the culture parameters influencing the organic acids production and, in particular, the succinate production, by this bacterium. Corynebacterium glutamicum 2262, used throughout this study, was a wild-type strain, which was not genetically designed for the production of succinate. The oxygenation level and the residual glucose concentration appeared as two critical parameters for the organic acids production. The maximal succinate concentration (4.9 g L −1 ) corresponded to the lower k L a value of 5 h −1 .Above 5 h −1 , a transient accumulation of the succinate was observed. Interestingly, the stop in the succinate production was concomitant with a lower threshold glucose concentration of 9 g L −1 . Taking into account this threshold, a fed-batch culture was performed to optimize the succinate production with C. glutamicum 2262. The results showed that this wild-type strain was able to produce 93.6 g L −1 of succinate, which is one of the highest concentration reported in the literature.
K E Y W O R D SCorynebacterium glutamicum, oxygen transfer, residual glucose concentration, succinate Abbreviations: DOC, dissolved oxygen concentration; k L a, volumetric mass transfer coefficient; LDH, lactate dehydrogenase.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.