Researchers Find Sugar-Producing Microbe from Alkaline Water

Teamwork between a professor at Sonoma State University and experts at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) of the U.S. Department of Energy has led to the isolation of an alkaline tolerant bacterium that has a potential use in biofuel production.

The bacterium was originally isolated from decaying plants in highly alkaline spring water at The Cedars, an isolated area in California's Outer Coast Range, and later identified as a Cellulomonas strain. The strain, now known as FA1, is highly tolerant to alkalinity and can degrade cellulose to produce fermentable sugar in alkaline environment. It can also withstand complete lack of oxygen.

The discovery of FA1 offers an opportunity to widen technological options for non-food biomass based biofuel production. An alkaline tolerant digester will fit well with some of the most effective biomass pretreatment methods that are carried out in alkaline instead of acidic environment.

The FA1 strain, however, has one major drawback – it cannot survive in environment with too much ethanol. The challenge for metabolic engineers is to further modify the microorganism to make it tolerant to high concentrations of ethanol and turn it into an efficient producer of biofuel.