exhibiting a modified route for uptake and catabolism of glycerol forms significant amounts of ethanol from this carbon source considered as 'non-fermentable'.

Background: Due to its inevitable formation during biodiesel production and its relatively high degree of reduction, glycerol is an attractive carbon source for microbial fermentation processes. However, glycerol is catabolized in a fully respiratory manner by the eukaryotic platform organism . We previously engineered   strains to favor fermentative metabolism of glycerol by replacing the native FAD-dependent glycerol catabolic pathway with the NAD-dependent 'DHA pathway'.

Involvement of the external mitochondrial NADH dehydrogenase Nde1 in glycerol metabolism by wild-type and engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains.

Glycerol is an attractive substrate for microbial fermentations due to its higher degree of reduction compared to glucose. The replacement of the native FAD-dependent glycerol catabolic pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by an artificial NADH-delivering dihydroxyacetone (DHA) pathway is supposed to facilitate the capturing of electrons in fermentation products. This requires that the electrons from the cytosolic NADH are not exclusively transferred to oxygen.

A modular metabolic engineering approach for the production of 1,2-propanediol from glycerol by Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Compared to sugars, a major advantage of using glycerol as a feedstock for industrial bioprocesses is the fact that this molecule is more reduced than sugars. A compound whose biotechnological production might greatly profit from the substrate's higher reducing power is 1,2-propanediol (1,2-PDO). Here we present a novel metabolic engineering approach to produce 1,2-PDO from glycerol in S.