Metabolic Engineering of Fusarium oxysporum to Improve Its Ethanol-Producing Capability.

Fusarium oxysporum is one of the few filamentous fungi capable of fermenting ethanol directly from plant cell wall biomass. It has the enzymatic toolbox necessary to break down biomass to its monosaccharides and, under anaerobic and microaerobic conditions, ferments them to ethanol. Although these traits could enable its use in consolidated processes and thus bypass some of the bottlenecks encountered in ethanol production from lignocellulosic material when Saccharomyces cerevisiae is used-namely its inability to degrade lignocellulose and to consume pentoses-two major disadvantages of F.

Constitutive homologous expression of phosphoglucomutase and transaldolase increases the metabolic flux of Fusarium oxysporum.

Background: Fusarium oxysporum is among the few filamentous fungi that have been reported of being able to directly ferment biomass to ethanol in a consolidated bioprocess. Understanding its metabolic pathways and their limitations can provide some insights on the genetic modifications required to enhance its growth and subsequent fermentation capability. In this study, we investigated the hypothesis reported previously that phosphoglucomutase and transaldolase are metabolic bottlenecks in the glycolysis and pentose phosphate pathway of the F.

Constitutive expression, purification and characterization of a phosphoglucomutase from Fusarium oxysporum.

The phosphoglucomutase gene from a wild type Fusarium oxysporum strain (F3), was homologously expressed, under the control of the constitutive promoter of gpdA of Aspergillus nidulans. The transformant produced elevated levels of phosphoglucomutase activity compared to the wild type, a fact that facilitated the subsequent purification procedure. The enzyme (FoPGM) was purified to homogeneity applying three anion exchange and one gel filtration chromatography steps.

Fungal multienzyme production on industrial by-products of the citrus-processing industry.

Orange peels is the principal solid by-product of the citrus processing industry and the disposal of the fresh peels is becoming a major problem to many factories. Dry citrus peels are rich in pectin, cellulose and hemicellulose and may be used as a fermentation substrate. Production of multienzyme preparations containing pectinolytic, cellulolytic and xylanolytic enzymes by the mesophilic fungi Aspergillus niger BTL, Fusarium oxysporum F3, Neurospora crassa DSM 1129 and Penicillium decumbens under solid-state fermentation (SSF) on dry orange peels was enhanced by optimization of initial pH of the culture medium and initial moisture level.