Authors: Toru Jojima Crispinus A Omumasaba Masayuki Inui Hideaki Yukawa
Publish Date: 2009/10/17
Volume: 85, Issue: 3, Pages: 471-480
Abstract
There is increasing interest in production of transportation fuels and commodity chemicals from lignocellulosic biomass most desirably through biological fermentation Considerable effort has been expended to develop efficient biocatalysts that convert sugars derived from lignocellulose directly to valueadded products Glucose the building block of cellulose is the most suitable fermentation substrate for industrial microorganisms such as Escherichia coli Corynebacterium glutamicum and Saccharomyces cerevisiae Other sugars including xylose arabinose mannose and galactose that comprise hemicellulose are generally less efficient substrates in terms of productivity and yield Although metabolic engineering including introduction of functional pentosemetabolizing pathways into pentoseincompetent microorganisms has provided steady progress in pentose utilization further improvements in sugar mixture utilization by microorganisms is necessary Among a variety of issues on utilization of sugar mixtures by the microorganisms recent studies have started to reveal the importance of sugar transporters in microbial fermentation performance In this article we review current knowledge on diversity and functions of sugar transporters especially those associated with pentose uptake in microorganisms Subsequently we review and discuss recent studies on engineering of sugar transport as a driving force for efficient bioconversion of sugar mixtures derived from lignocellulose
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