Depleted supplies of fossil fuel, regular price hikes of gasoline, and environmental damage have necessitated the search for economic and eco-benign alternative of gasoline. Ethanol is produced from food/feed-based substrates (grains, sugars, and molasses), and its application as an energy source does not seem fit for long term due to the increasing fuel, food, feed, and other needs. These conc...

Bioconversion of (-)-epicatechin (-EC), (+)-epicatechin (+EC), (-)-catechin (-C), and (+)-catechin (+C) by (-)-epigallocatechin (-EGC)-metabolizing bacteria, Adlercreutzia equolifaciens MT4s-5, Eggerthella lenta JCM 9979, and Flavonifractor plautii MT42, was investigated. A. equolifaciens MT4s-5 could catalyze C ring cleavage to form (2S)-1-(3,4-dihydroxyphenyl)-3-(2,4,6-trihydroxyphenyl)propan...

BACKGROUND Butane-2,3-diol (2,3-BD) is a fuel and platform biochemical with various industrial applications. 2,3-BD exists in three stereoisomeric forms: (2R,3R)-2,3-BD, meso-2,3-BD and (2S,3S)-2,3-BD. Microbial fermentative processes have been reported for (2R,3R)-2,3-BD and meso-2,3-BD production. RESULTS The production of (2S,3S)-2,3-BD from glucose was acquired by whole cells of recombina...

Rhodococcus I24 and B264-1 are able to stereospecifically bioconvert indene to indandiol,a potential precursor to CRIXIVAN. Indene bioconversion is catalyzed by the multicomponent enzymes, naphthalene d ioxygenase and toluene dioxygenase. The genes for these enzy mes have not been identified in Rhodococcus, but sequences are known in Pseudomonas. The objective of these experiments is to screen ...

Bioconversion (biotransformation) experiments on arenes (aromatic compounds), including various tricyclic fused aromatic compounds such as fluorene, dibenzofuran, dibenzothiophene, carbazole, acridene, and phenanthridine, were done using the cells of Escherichia coli transformants expressing several arene dioxygenase genes. E. coli carrying the phenanthrene dioxygenase (phdABCD) genes derived f...

A unicellular microalga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, was isolated from rice paddy-field soil and water samples and used in the biotransformation of hydrocortisone (1). This strain has not been previously tested for steroid bioconversion. Fermentation was carried out in BG-11 medium supplemented with 0.05% substrate at 25 degrees C for 14 days of incubation. The products obtained were chromatogra...