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. 2023 Jun;70(3):1176-1188.
doi: 10.1002/bab.2430. Epub 2023 Jan 9.

Metabolic engineering of Aspergillus niger to enhance production of ethanol

Ara Itzel de Los Santos Mondragón  1 , Brisia Alejandra Aguilar Barragan  1 , Uriel Rojas Sánchez  2 , Cristian Alberto López Calleja  1 , Blanca E Millán-Chiu  3 , Achim M Loske  3 , Miguel Angel Gómez Lim  1
Affiliations

Metabolic engineering of Aspergillus niger to enhance production of ethanol

Ara Itzel de Los Santos Mondragón et al. Biotechnol Appl Biochem. 2023 Jun.

Abstract

This work describes the genetic transformation of a strain of Aspergillus niger with five different constructs containing 16 different heterologous genes, coding for four oxidoreductases, two cellobiohydrolases, one endoglucanase, one β-glucosidase, six enzymes involved in xylose metabolism, and two enzymes involved in fermentation. The aim was to try and engineer a consolidated bioprocessing in A. niger. The fungus already contains most of these enzymes and we only enhanced endogenous activities. We recovered nine transformants containing all genes, as indicated by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). To confirm that the products of the genes were functional, we measured the activity of five different enzymes in all the strains, and they all showed enhanced activity over the wild-type (wt) strain. The strains were grown on carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and xylan as substrates, and they produced considerably more ethanol than the wt. The levels of ethanol production were comparable to those reported in the literature.

Keywords: Aspergillus niger; bioethanol; consolidated bioprocessing; lignocellulose.

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References

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