Microbial Polyphenol Production in a Biphasic Process

Abstract

Microbial synthesis of aromatic compounds is generally limited by inherent product toxicity toward the producing cells. Here, in situ extractive strategies represent an efficient approach to avoid such toxic effects and to increase the overall process performance. We conducted a solvent screening to identify suitable organic solvents to develop a biphasic extractive strategy for microbial plant polyphenol production using Corynebacterium glutamicum. From 10 pre-selected organic solvents, tributyrin (TB) showed the best biocompatibility and was chosen for the biphasic extraction process due to its beneficial effect on partitioning and solubility of the plant polyphenol resveratrol. In bioreactors, biphasic cultivation with TB allowed for a product titer of 7.5 mM (1.71 g L-1) resveratrol with a volumetric productivity of 0.26 mM h-1 and a product yield of 0.92 mol mol-1. This biphasic cultivation procedure can be directly employed for the synthesis of other aromatics with similar properties using C. glutamicum.