Use of a mannitol rich ensiled grass press juice (EGPJ) as a sole carbon source for polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) production through high cell density cultivation.

Federico Cerrone, Reeta Davis, Shane T Kenny, Trevor Woods, Anthonia O'Donovan, Vijai Kumar Gupta, Maria Tuohy, Ramesh P Babu, Padraig O'Kiely, Kevin O'Connor

Index: Bioresour. Technol. 191 , 45-52, (2015)

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Abstract

This study demonstrates the use of a mannitol rich ensiled grass press juice (EGPJ) as a renewable carbon substrate for polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) production in shaking flask experiments and fed-batch stirred tank reactor cultivations. Fed-batch cultivations of Burkholderia sacchari IPT101 using EGPJ as sole carbon source produced 44.5 g/L CDW containing 33% polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) in 36 h, while Pseudomonas chlororaphis IMD555 produced a CDW of 37 g/L containing 10% of medium chain length polyhydroxyalkanoates (mcl-PHA) in 34 h. PHB and mcl-PHA extracted from B. sacchari IPT101 and P. chlororaphis IMD555, grown on EGPJ, had a molecular weight of 548 kg/mol and 115.4 kg/mol, respectively. While mcl-PHA can be produced from EGPJ, PHB production is more interesting as there is a 4-fold higher volumetric productivity compared to mcl-PHA.Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.