Fermentation

DDCE has developed a mixed sugar ethanologen based on the bacterium Zymomonas mobilis (Z. mobilis), a naturally occurring ethanol producer used, for example, in the production of Tequila and African palm wine. DuPont has optimized a strain first acquired from the National Renewable Energy Lab and applied advanced metabolic engineering to the xylose pathway to significantly improve the organism’s ability to use C5 sugars (from hemicellulose) for ethanol production from our process hydrolysate. Z. mobilis has high ethanol yield as well as high tolerance to ethanol, in excess of 100 g/l. These characteristics make this organism quite favorable compared to engineered yeast strains.

Metabolic Engineering of Zymomomas

• Four xylose pathway genes from previous NREL research
• New tools to knockout genes and insert foreign genes
• Genetic 'toolbox' to speed up new strain construction from several months to few weeks
• New genes to improve xylose conversion to ethanol and tolerance to hydrolysate
• New integrated strain that maximizes ethanol yeild and productivity

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