The ongoing climatic crisis and its adverse consequences have prompted society to move away from petrochemistry and turn towards alternative energy sources and industrial intermediates. Among mostly studied microorganisms is Clostridium acetobutylicum, a model solventogenic strain used since the 1920’s for acetone, butanol and ethanol (ABE) production. Despite its extensive industrial deployment, ABE fermentation suffers from several drawbacks that traditional strategies like process optimization or metabolic engineering cannot tackle. C. acetobutylicum is sensitive to dioxygen and LCB pretreatment inhibitors, is not capable of consuming untreated LCB and has a limited product repertoire and unoptimized carbon yield. Using microbial consortia for biotechnology purposes has recently gained interest among the scientific community. Whether they are natural, synthetic or semi-synthetic, consortia can be used to take advantage of synergistic interactions between species and labor division between the strains. Specifically, clostridial species have been used in the past for purposes as various as gas or longer chain alcohol production or consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) strategies.
This PhD’s objective is to explore the microbial consortium approach to try and circumvent (or even abolish) current limitations to ABE fermentation..
