Tuesday, April 20, 2010
11-10

Development of a low-cost biomass conversion process using the microorganism Clostridium phytofermentans

Kevin Gray and Kexue Huang. Qteros, Inc, 100 Campus Dr, 6th Floor, Marlborough, MA 01752

Qteros is developing a biomass to ethanol conversion process around the use of Clostridium phytofermentans (the “Q microbe™”).  C. phytofermentans has the natural ability to hydrolyze all types of polysaccharides present in biomass and ferment those sugars into ethanol.  Consolidation of hydrolysis and fermentation into a single microbe will result in significant savings in capital and operating costs.  The primary product of metabolism of C. phytofermentans is ethanol with almost no carbon directed to other products and yields upwards of 90% on sugar have been observed.  The genome sequence of the Q microbe™ shows the presence of over 105 different glycosyl hydrolases and microarray analysis indicated that the glycosyl hydrolases were induced when the organism was grown in the presence of complex carbohydrates and down-regulated when grown on simple sugars.  Enzyme titration data has shown that the Q microbe™ achieves maximal productivity with one-fourth to one-fifth the amount of exogenous enzyme required by Saccharomyces cerevisae.   A genetic system has been developed such that specific genes can be deleted or over-expressed in order to improve performance.  This presentation will describe recent progress in strain and process development to meet commercial metrics.  


Web Page: www.qteros.com

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