BioProject

The presence of anti-microbial phenolic compounds, such as the model compound ferulic acid, in biomass hydrolysates poses significant challenges to the widespread use of biomass in conjunction with whole cell biocatalysis or fermentation. More...

The presence of anti-microbial phenolic compounds, such as the model compound ferulic acid, in biomass hydrolysates poses significant challenges to the widespread use of biomass in conjunction with whole cell biocatalysis or fermentation. Biofuel toxicity must also be overcome to allow for efficient production of next generation biofuels such as butanol, isopropanol, and others for widespread usage. Currently, these inhibitory compounds must be removed through additional downstream processing or sufficiently diluted to create environments suitable for most industrially important microbial strains. This study explores the high ferulic acid and n-butanol tolerance in Lactobacillus brevis (L. brevis), a lactic acid bacteria often found in fermentation processes, by global transcriptional response analysis. The transcriptional profile of L. brevis under ferulic acid and butanol stress reveals that the presence of ferulic acid primarily triggers the expression of membrane proteins to counteract ferulic acid induced changes in membrane fluidity and ion leakage. In contrast to the ferulic acid stress response, butanol addition to growing cultures uniquely induced the entire fatty acid synthesis pathway in the midst of a generalized stress response. Overexpression of the rate-limiting acetyl-CoA carboxylase subunits (AccABCD) in E. coli to increase lipid synthesis had no effect on butanol tolerance, suggesting that additional engineering is necessary to produce sufficient levels of appropriate fatty acids to confer butanol tolerance. Several promising routes for understanding both phenolic acid and butanol tolerance have been identified based upon these findings. These insights may be used to guide further engineering of model industrial organisms to better tolerate both classes of inhibitors in processed biomass used for biofuel production. Overall design: Cultures were grown to OD ~ 0.2 in MRS media (baffled flasks), T = 30 C, 100 rpm. Butanol was then added to the cultures. Samples were harvested 15, 75, and 135 min after butanol addition. Each time point has 3 biological replicates, and dye swaps were incorporated into the microarray experiments. Less...