| Enrichment of a mixed bacterial culture with a high polyhydroxyalkanoate storage capacity. Johnson K, Jiang Y, Kleerebezem R, Muyzer G, van Loosdrecht MC. Biomacromolecules. 2009. |
Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are microbial storage polymers that attract interest as bioplastics. PHAs can be produced with open mixed cultures if a suitable enrichment step based on the ecological role of PHA is used. An acetate-fed sequencing batch reactor operated with 1 day biomass residence time and with feast-famine cycles of 12 h was used to enrich a mixed culture of PHA producers. In subsequent fed-batch experiments under growth limiting conditions, the enriched mixed culture produced PHA up to a cellular content of 89 wt % within 7.6 h (average rate of 1.2 g/g/h). The PHA produced from acetate was the homopolymer polyhydroxybutyrate. The culture was dominated by a Gammaproteobacterium that showed little similarity on 16S rRNA level with known bacteria (<90% sequence similarity). The mixed culture process for PHA production does not require aseptic conditions. Waste streams rather than pure substrates could be used as raw materials. |
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