Production of 5-Keto-gluconic Acid by a Species of Pseudomonas

The commercial production of chemicals using pathway engineering

Integration of metabolic pathway engineering and fermentation production technologies is necessary for the successful commercial production of chemicals. The 'toolbox' to do pathway engineering is ever expanding to enable mining of biodiversity, to maximize productivity, enhance carbon efficiency, improve product purity, expand product lines, and broaden markets. Functional genomics, proteomics, fluxomics, and physiomics are complementary to pathway engineering, and their successful applications are bound to multiply product turnover per cell, channel carbon efficiently, shrink the size of factories (i.e., reduce steel in the ground), and minimize product development cycle times to bring products to market.

Microbial processes for ascorbic acid biosynthesis: a review

L-Ascorbic acid is an important product currently made using the Reichstein process, which is mainly chemical. Recently, bacteria have been identified that are able to transform in a very efficient way glucose to 2,5-keto-D-gluconic acid and this product to 2-keto-L-idonic acid, precursor of L-ascorbic acid. When the corresponding strains are used together, it is possible to get 2-keto-L-idonic acid directly from glucose. Moreover, new strains have been constructed by introducing a gene from a strain responsible for the second step into a strain responsible for the first step. By using one of the new strains, the transformation can be performed in a single step with only one strain. However, the classical process still remains the most competitive.