Metabolic engineering of Moorella thermoacetica for thermophilic bioconversion of gaseous substrates to a volatile chemical

Gas fermentation is one of the promising bioprocesses to convert CO or syngas to important chemicals. Thermophilic gas fermentation of volatile chemicals has the potential for the development of consolidated bioprocesses that can simultaneously separate products during fermentation. This study reports the production of acetone from CO and H, CO, or syngas by introducing the acetone production pathway using acetyl-coenzyme A (Ac-CoA) and acetate produced via the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway in Moorella thermoacetica. Reducing the carbon flux from Ac-CoA to acetate through genetic engineering successfully enhanced acetone productivity, which varied on the basis of the gas composition. The highest acetone productivity was obtained with CO-H, while autotrophic growth collapsed with CO-H. By adding H to CO, the acetone productivity from the same amount of carbon source increased compared to CO gas only, and the maximum specific acetone production rate also increased from 0.04 to 0.09 g-acetone/g-dry cell/h. Our development of the engineered thermophilic acetogen M. thermoacetica, which grows at a temperature higher than the boiling point of acetone (58 °C), would pave the way for developing a consolidated process with simplified and cost-effective recovery via condensation following gas fermentation.