Klebsiella Planticola JEFFREY S
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
APPLIED AND ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY, Sept. 1987, p. 2039-2044 Vol. 53, No. 9 0099-2240/87/092039-06$02.00/0 Copyright © 1987, American Society for Microbiology Fermentation of D-Xylose to Ethanol by Genetically Modified Klebsiella planticola JEFFREY S. TOLAN AND R. K. FINN* School of Chemical Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853 Received 19 November 1986/Accepted 1 June 1987 D-Xylose is a plentiful pentose sugar derived from agricultural or forest residues. Enteric bacteria such as Klebsiella spp. ferment D-xylose to form mixed acids and butanediol in addition to ethanol. Thus the ethanol yield is normally low. Zymomonas spp. and most yeasts are unable to ferment xylose, but they do ferment hexose sugars to ethanol in high yield because they contain pyruvate decarboxylase (EC 4.1.1.1), a key enzyme that is absent from enteric bacteria. This report describes the fermentation of D-xylose by Klebsiella planticola ATCC 33531 bearing multicopy plasmids containing the pdc gene inserted from Zymomonas mobilis. Expression of the gene markedly increased the yield of ethanol to 1.3 mol/mol of xylose, or 25.1 g/liter. Concurrently, there were significant decreases in the yields of formate, acetate, lactate, and butanediol. Transconjugant Klebsiella spp. grew almost as fast as the wild type and tolerated up to 4% ethanol. The plasmid was retained by the cells during at least one batch culture, even in the absence of selective pressure by antibiotics to maintain the plasmid. Ethanol production was 31.6 g/liter from 79.6 g of mixed substrate per liter chosen to simulate hydrolyzed hemicellulose. The physiology of the wild-type of K. planticola is described in more detail than in the original report of its isolation. Hemicellulose, a major constituent of plant cell wall (7; see also Fig. 1 of reference 35). The ethanol yield from materials, makes up 30 to 40% of many agricultural residues these pathways is low, because ethanol is produced only (20). Upon hydrolysis with acids or enzymes, hemicellulose from the phosphoroclastic split of pyruvate to ethanol- is converted to a mixture of hexose sugars and the pentose acetate-formate (or H2 plus C02) in the molar ratio 1:1:2. sugars D-xylose and L-arabinose (11, 21). The microbial The key enzyme for ethanol production in the obligately conversion of these pentose sugars to ethanol for use as a fermentative bacterium Z. mobilis, PDC, was implanted into fuel additive has received considerable attention (31). the Klebsiella sp. to increase the ethanol yield. PDC Current research is focused on fermentation of xylose by catalyzes the conversion of pyruvate to CO2 and acetalde- yeasts (10, 18, 34) or by both mesophilic and thermophilic hyde, which is subsequently reduced to ethanol with con- clostridia (1, 22, 24, 37). Yeasts produce ethanol efficiently current oxidation of NADH by alcohol dehydrogenase, a from hexoses by the pyruvate decarboxylase (EC 4.1.1.1)- common enzyme present in many organisms including Kleb- alcohol dehydrogenase (EC 1.1.1.1) (PDC-ADH) system. siella spp. The structural gene which codes for PDC has However, during xylose fermentation the by-product xylitol been isolated in Z. mobilis and cloned into Escherichia coli accumulates, thereby reducing the yield of ethanol (6, 18). (3) and Erwinia chrysanthemi (35). In both cases the amount Furthermore, yeasts are reported to ferment L-arabinose of ethanol produced increased markedly relative to untrans- only very weakly (11). In contrast to yeasts, the clostridia conjugated cells, with concurrent decreases in acetate and can rapidly catabolize a variety of pentoses. However, they formate levels. However, cell growth rates and tolerance to do not possess the PDC-ADH system for dissimilation of ethanol were sharply diminished. The reason for these pyruvate; rather, pyruvate undergoes a thioclastic cleavage effects was not clear. By using Klebsiella sp. as the recipient to yield acetyl coenzyme A, C02, and H2. Clostridia are of the Zymomonas pdc gene, we hoped to avoid these therefore limited in ethanol yield by production of unwanted problems; the Klebsiellae have a higher growth rate on metabolites such as acetate, lactate, butanol, and butyrate. xylose and a higher alcohol tolerance than many other Only a handful of bacterial species are known which do enteric bacteria have (Tolan, unpublished data). possess the important PDC-ADH pathway to ethanol (8, 32). This paper describes the improvement in the production of Among these, Zymomonas mobilis has the most active PDC ethanol from D-xylose by a recombinant Klebsiella sp. over system, although it is incapable of dissimilating pentose production by the wild type. Klebsiella planticola was sugars. chosen as the recipient of the pdc gene from Z. mobilis on We chose to study the fermentation of xylose to ethanol the basis of its lack of pathogenicity. The effect of the by the enteric bacterium Klebsiella sp., which contains the implanted pdc gene on growth, ethanol tolerance, and fer- gene that codes for pyruvate decarboxylase from Z. mobilis. mentation products is described here. Klebsiellae are gram-negative facultative anaerobes. Of the enteric bacteria, they ferment the broadest range of sugars, MATERIALS AND METHODS including all of the pentoses (23, 26). Klebsiellae ferment Cultures. The cultures used were K. planticola ATCC both hexoses and pentoses by the Embden-Meyerhof path- 33531 (2) and, in some experiments, Klebsiella oxytoca way to yield pyruvate, which is dissimilated to a coliform- NRRL B-199, provided by L. Nakamura. Monthly subcul- type mix of acidic, neutral, and gaseous products including tures were made on nutrient agar slants and stored under ethanol, acetate, formate, lactate, butanediol, C02, and H2 refrigeration. Escherichia coli S17-1(pZM15) was kindly supplied by B. * Corresponding author. Brau (3). Plasmid pZM15 comprises the pdc gene from Z. 2039 2040 TOLAN AND FINN APPL. ENVIRON. MICROBIOL. at 3.5% ethanol, growth was limited to one or two doublings Anaerobic Growth with much less than 2 g of xylose consumed per liter, and at 5% ethanol, no growth was observed. A somewhat similar pattern of inhibition has been reported for E. coli (9). The 0.45 F decline in growth rate at 3% ethanol was accompanied by the appearance of filamentous cells, 25-fold longer than cells in OD an ethanol-free medium. Such filaments have been observed in cultures of Z. mobilis and E. coli in excess ethanol and 0.30 indicate irregularities of cell replication (16). Growth and ethanol tolerance were stimulated by the addition of yeast extract to the growth medium. More than 2 0 g of xylose per liter was utilized in up to 4% ethanol in the 0.15 0- presence of 2.5 g of yeast extract per liter. The factor(s) responsible for growth stimulation are not known. Addition of Casamino Acids (Difco) to the growth medium stimulated growth only in the absence of ethanol (data not shown). 0 2 4 6 Ashing of the yeast extract or treatment with activated Time (hr) charcoal to leave mainly inorganic salts completely removed the stimulatory effect, in contrast to the findings of Osman FIG. 1. Anaerobic growth (optical density [OD] at 600 nm) of K. and Ingram, who studied the role of yeast extract in promot- planticola and K. oxytoca at initial pH 7 in minimal xylose medium ing alcohol tolerance in Zymomonas spp. (28). Extraction of plus 1 g of yeast extract per liter. Symbols: 0, A, 37°C; 0, A, 30°C; yeast extract with diethyl ether to remove membrane com- 0, 0, K. oxytoca; A, A, K. planticola. K. planticola grows best at 30°C, and K. oxytoca grows best at 37°C. ponents (33) had no effect on yeast extract activity. The anaerobic growth rate of transconjugant cells was within 17 to 28% of that of the wild type in the absence of mobilis and its promoter and the chloramphenicol resistance ethanol, and consumption of 2 g of sugar per liter was gene. E. coli S17-1 is a histidine auxotroph. Plasmid pZM15 attained in up to 3.5 to 4% ethanol (Fig. 2). Aerobically, the was conjugated into K. planticola by filter mating by G. transconjugants grew 20% more slowly than the wild type. Schatz and S. V. Beer, Department of Plant Pathology, Cell growth and xylose consumption follow Monod kinet- Cornell University. ics, with a saturation constant (K, value) measured from Cultivations and analysis. Composition of the media, cul- steady-state chemostat conditions (22) of 1.2 g/liter. This tivation methods for cultures in broth tubes or jar fer- relatively high K, value for xylose (several hundredfold mentors, and analytical methods were the same as those higher than that for glucose) is similar to the K, vlaues for described in the companion paper (35). The conjugated K. growth of several other bacteria on xylose (17, 29, 30, 35). planticola cells were cultivated as the wild type, with the Fermentation products. Batch fermentations were run at addition of 20 mg of chloramphenicol per liter unless other- 30°C and several controlled pH values for cells with and wise indicated. Sugars were autoclaved as 41% (wt/vol) without the pdc plasmid (Fig. 3). The fermentation products concentrates and injected into the fermentor, or added by did not vary with temperature over the range 22 to 37°C (data Masterflex pump (Cole-Parmer Instrument Co.) during fed- not shown). The mass balances accounted for 85 to 108% of batch runs. For cultures with more than 10 g of carbon source per liter, the basal salt medium was supplemented with 5 g of yeast extract (BBL Microbiology System) per liter, 5.7 g of (NH4)2SO4 per liter, and 0.2 ml of Antifoam C emulsion (Sigma Chemical Co.) per liter.