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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Peoria, Illinois » National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research » Bioenergy Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #346325
Research Project: Develop Technologies for Production of Platform Chemicals and Advanced Biofuels from Lignocellulosic Feedstocks

Location: Bioenergy Research

Title: Ninety six well microtiter plate as microbioreactors for production of itaconic acid by six Aspergillus terreus strains

Author
item Saha, Badal
item Kennedy, Gregory - Greg

Submitted to: Journal of Microbiological Methods
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/2/2017
Publication Date: 11/3/2017
Publication URL: http://handle.nal.usda.gov/10113/5858065
Citation: Saha, B.C., Kennedy, G.J. 2017. Ninety six well microtiter plate as microbioreactors for production of itaconic acid by six Aspergillus terreus strains. Journal of Microbiological Methods. 144:53-59. doi: 10.1016/j.mimet.2017.11.002.

Interpretive Summary: Itaconic acid is a building block platform chemical which is currently produced industrially from glucose by fermentation with a fungus. Biomass has the potential to serve as low cost source of sugars for itaconic acid production. However, the fungus could not produce itaconic acid from hydrolyzed biomass. In this work, six fungal strains were evaluated for production of itaconic acid from sugars and hydrolyzed biomass in minibioreactors. This research data demonstrates that minibioreactor is very useful as a convenient, reliable and easy way to investigate the reasons for not producing itaconic acid by the fungal strains and would greatly aid in developing mutant strains, screening and optimization of itaconic acid production by a fungus.

Technical Abstract: Itaconic acid (IA) is a building block platform chemical that is currently produced industrially from glucose by fermentation with Aspergillus terreus. However, lignocellulosic biomass has the potential to serve as low cost source of sugars for production of IA. Previously, 100 A. terreus strains were evaluated for production of IA from pentose sugars in shake-flasks. Six selected strains were then investigated for IA production in shake-flasks. But none of the strains grew and produced IA using biomass hydrolyzates. In order to study the factors inhibiting fungal growth and IA production, we have evaluated these six strains for sugar utilization and IA production from glucose, xylose, arabinose, mixed sugars, and both dilute acid and liquid hot water pretreated wheat straw hydrolyzates in microtiter plate microbioreactors (MTP) at 100 µL scale. The results clearly indicate that MTP is very useful as a convenient, reliable and affordable platform to investigate the reasons for inhibition of growth and IA production by the A. terreus strains and should greatly aid in strain development and optimization of IA production by the fungal strains.