Accumulation of Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) from Octanoate in Different Pseudomonas Belonging to the rRNA Homology Group I STÉPHANE DIARD1, JEAN-PHILIPPE CARLIER2, ELISABETH AGERON1, PATRICK A.D. GRIMONT1, VALÉRIE LANGLOIS3, PHILIPPE GUÉRIN3, and ODILE M.M. BOUVET1

Many bacteria are able to accumulate poly(3-hydroxyalcanoates) (PHA) as a carbon and energy reserve. PHAs are very promising bacterial polyesters with chemical and physical properties that make them suitable for industrial and medical applications (ANDERSON and DAWES, 1990; BRAUNEGG et al., 1998; MADISON and HUISMAN, 1999; WILLIAMS et al., 1999). Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (P-3HB) is the most common type of short-side-chain PHA and the ability of bacteria to accumulate P-3HB is often used as a taxonomic characteristic. Such accumulation occurs in a wide variety of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria which accumulate P-3HB from media containing acetate, butyrate, glucose, gluconate or n-alkanoates. Pseudomonas putida GPo1 (CIP 105816 = ATCC 29347) commonly know as P. oleovorans GPo1 (VANBEILEN et al., 2001) and a number of Pseudomonas species accumulate various medium-side-chain PHAs (msc-PHA) such as poly(3-hydroxyoctanoate) (P-3HO) when n-alcohols, n-alkanoates or gluconate are provided Accumulation of Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) from Octanoate in Different Pseudomonas Belonging to the rRNA Homology Group I