Lactobacillus diolivorans turned out to be a good natural producer of 1,3-propanediol and was able to compensate reported inhibitory effects of crude glycerol on growth and production.
A toolbox for the genetic engineering of Lactobacillus diolivorans including a transformation method as well as the expression vector pSHM for homologous and heterologous protein expression was developed to further improve the production process. The functional expression of genes was proved by the heterologous expression of the green fluorescent protein resulting in 40-60 fold higher fluorescence of the obtained clones compared to the wild-type strain. Homologous overexpression of a putative NADPH-dependent 1,3-propanediol oxidoreductase improved the 1,3-propanediol production by 20% in batch cultures.