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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, December 2001, p. 5621-5625, Vol. 67, No. 12
Department of Cell and Developmental Biology,
University of Rome "La Sapienza," Rome
00185,1 and Department of Biotechnology
and Biosciences, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan
20126,2 Italy, and Tate & Lyle North
America, Decatur, Illinois 625213
Received 10 May 2001/Accepted 23 September 2001
A high yield of lactic acid per gram of glucose consumed and the
absence of additional metabolites in the fermentation broth are two
important goals of lactic acid production by microrganisms. Both
purposes have been previously approached by using a
Kluyveromyces lactis yeast strain lacking the single
pyruvate decarboxylase gene (KlPDC1) and transformed
with the heterologous lactate dehydrogenase gene (LDH).
The LDH gene was placed under the control the
KlPDC1 promoter, which has allowed very high levels of
lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity, due to the absence of
autoregulation by KlPdc1p. The maximal yield obtained was 0.58 g
g
0099-2240/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/AEM.67.12.5621-5625.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Efficient Homolactic Fermentation by
Kluyveromyces lactis Strains Defective in Pyruvate
Utilization and Transformed with the Heterologous
LDH Gene

1, suggesting that a large fraction of the glucose
consumed was not converted into pyruvate. In a different attempt to
redirect pyruvate flux toward homolactic fermentation, we used
K. lactis LDH transformant strains deleted of the
pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) E1
subunit gene. A great process
improvement was obtained by the use of producing strains lacking both
PDH and pyruvate decarboxylase activities, which showed yield levels of
as high as 0.85 g g
1 (maximum theoretical yield, 1 g
g
1), and with high LDH activity.
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Rome "La Sapienza,"
P.le Aldo Moro, Rome 00185, Italy. Phone: 390-649912215. Fax:
390-649912351. E-mail: Michele.Bianchi{at}uniroma1.it.
This work is dedicated to Franco Tato.
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