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Combined Inactivation Of The Clostridium Cellulolyticum Lactate And Malate Dehydrogenase Genes Substantially Increases Ethanol Yield From Cellulose And Switchgrass Fermentations, Yongchao Li, Timothy J. Tschaplinski, Nancy L. Engle, Choo Y. Hamilton, Miquel Rodriguez, James C. Liao, Christopher W. Schadt, Adam M. Guss, Yunfeng Yang, David E. Graham

Microbiology Publications and Other Works

Background

The model bacterium Clostridium cellulolyticum efficiently degrades crystalline cellulose and hemicellulose, using cellulosomes to degrade lignocellulosic biomass. Although it imports and ferments both pentose and hexose sugars to produce a mixture of ethanol, acetate, lactate, H₂ and CO₂, the proportion of ethanol is low, which impedes its use in consolidated bioprocessing for biofuels production. Therefore genetic engineering will likely be required to improve the ethanol yield. Plasmid transformation, random mutagenesis and heterologous expression systems have previously been developed for C. cellulolyticum, but targeted mutagenesis has not been reported for this organism, hindering genetic engineering.

Results …