Deciphering Molecular Mechanism Underlying Self-Flocculation of Zymomonas mobilis for Robust Production
Lian-Ying Cao, Yongfu Yang, Xue Zhang, Yunhao Chen, Ji-Wen Yao, Xia Wang, Juan Xia, Chen‐Guang Liu, Shihui Yang, Ute Römling, Feng‐Wu Bai
Abstract
Stress tolerance is a prerequisite for microbial cell factories to be robust in production, particularly for biorefinery of lignocellulosic biomass to produce biofuels, bioenergy, and bio-based chemicals for sustainable socioeconomic development, since various inhibitors are released during the pretreatment to destroy the recalcitrant lignin-carbohydrate complex for sugar production through enzymatic hydrolysis of the cellulose component, and their detoxification is too costly for producing bulk commodities. Although tolerance to individual stress has been intensively studied, the progress seems less significant since microbial cells are inevitably suffering from multiple stresses simultaneously under production conditions. When self-flocculating, microbial cells are more tolerant to multiple stresses through the general stress response due to enhanced quorum sensing associated with the morphological change for physiological and metabolic advantages. Therefore, elucidation of the molecular mechanism underlying such a self-flocculating phenotype is significant for engineering microbial cells with the unique multicellular morphology through rational design to boost their production performance.