Molecular Biology Commons^™

Co2-Fixing One-Carbon Metabolism In A Cellulose-Degrading Bacterium Clostridium Thermocellum, Wei Xiong, Paul P. Lin, Lisa Warner, James C. Liao, Pin-Ching Maness, Katherine J. Chou

Biomolecular Research Center Publications and Presentations

Clostridium thermocellum can ferment cellulosic biomass to formate and other end products, including CO₂. This organism lacks formate dehydrogenase (Fdh), which catalyzes the reduction of CO₂ to formate. However, feeding the bacterium ¹³C-bicarbonate and cellobiose followed by NMR analysis showed the production of ¹³C-formate in C. thermocellum culture, indicating the presence of an uncharacterized pathway capable of converting CO₂ to formate. Combining genomic and experimental data, we demonstrated that the conversion of CO₂ to formate serves as a CO₂ entry point into the reductive one-carbon (C1) metabolism, and internalizes CO_{2 …}