The United States has lost market share regarding fermentation of fine chemicals, while technology for producing chemicals from non-food renewable feedstocks has largely been limited to ethanol. There is an opportunity to extend this technology to medium to high value chemicals, and reverse the trade imbalance. A genetically modified bacterium has been created that over-produce fine chemical metabolic products from sugars found in biomass. This SBIR research will demonstrate the production of higher value products from lower cost biomass feedstocks, and determine the positive economic contribution of this process. This data will form the foundation for improved economics of a biomass biorefinery producing both fuel ethanol and fine chemicals from renewable feedstocks. The SBIR research is aimed at determining the mutant bacteriumÂ’s yields in small fermentors on biomass sugars in low cost media, and further modifying the mutants to improve in their overall yield of key metabolites. The improved fermentation organisms will be evaluated on both biomass sugar mixtures and authentic biomass hydrolysates obtained from a pretreatment reactor.
Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: Technology from this SBIR (Phase I and II) can be used to produce numerous fine chemicals which have a growing market. The improved fermentation microorganism can be the starting point for improvements and modifications aimed at derivative fine chemicals in the semi-commodity range, thus expanding the use of this technology dramatically.
