1 Minimizing acetate formation in E. coli fermentations 2 Marjan De Mey*, Sofie De Maeseneire, Wim Soetaert and Erick Vandamme 3 Ghent University, Laboratory of Industrial Microbiology and Biocatalysis, Department of 4 Biochemical and Microbial Technology, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Coupure links 5 653, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium 6 7 * Correspondence address: Marjan De Mey 8 Laboratory of Industrial Microbiology and Biocatalysis 9 Department of Biochemical and Microbial Technology 10 Faculty of Bioscience Engineering 11 Ghent University 12 Coupure links 653 13 B-9000 Gent 14 Tel: +32-9-264-60-28 15 Fax: +32-9-264-62-31 16
[email protected] 17 Keywords: acetate reduction, Escherichia coli, metabolic engineering 1 18 Abstract 19 Escherichia coli remains the best established production organisms in industrial 20 biotechnology. However, during aerobic fermentation runs at high growth rates, considerable 21 amounts of acetate are accumulated as by-product. This by-product has negative effects on 22 growth and protein production. Over the last 20 years, substantial research efforts have been 23 spent to reduce acetate accumulation during aerobic growth of E. coli on glucose. From the 24 onset it was clear that this quest should not be a simple nor uncomplicated one. Simple 25 deletion of the acetate pathway, reduced the acetate accumulation, but instead other by- 26 products were formed. This minireview gives a clear outline of these research efforts and the 27 outcome of them, including bioprocess level approaches and genetic approaches. Recently, 28 the latter seems to have some promising results. 29 30 1 Introduction 31 Escherichia coli was the first and is still one of the most commonly used production 32 organisms in industrial biotechnology.