Department of Biology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey-Camden, Camden, NJ, United States of America.
Center for Computational & Integrative Biology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey-Camden, Camden, NJ, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2020 Feb 4;15(2):e0221737. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0221737. eCollection 2020.
Bioethanol production from lignocellulosic biomass has received increasing attention over the past decade. Many attempts have been made to reduce the cost of bioethanol production by combining the separate steps of the process into a single-step process known as consolidated bioprocessing. This requires identification of organisms that can efficiently decompose lignocellulose to simple sugars and ferment the pentose and hexose sugars liberated to ethanol. There have been many attempts in engineering laboratory strains by adding new genes or modifying genes to expand the capacity of an industrial microorganism. There has been less attention in improving bioethanol-related processes utilizing natural variation existing in the natural ecotypes. In this study, we sought to identify genomic loci contributing to variation in saccharification of cellulose and fermentation of glucose in the fermenting cellulolytic fungus Neurospora crassa through quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis. We identified one major QTL contributing to fermentation of glucose and multiple putative QTL's underlying saccharification. Understanding the natural variation of the major QTL gene would provide new insights in developing industrial microbes for bioethanol production.
在过去的十年中，人们对利用木质纤维素生物质生产生物乙醇越来越关注。许多人试图通过将该过程的各个步骤组合成一个称为整合生物加工的单一步骤来降低生物乙醇生产的成本。这需要鉴定能够将木质纤维素高效分解为单糖并发酵释放的戊糖和己糖生成乙醇的生物体。人们已经通过添加新基因或修饰基因来对工程实验室菌株进行了多次尝试，以扩大工业微生物的产能。然而，人们对利用自然生态型中存在的自然变异来改进与生物乙醇相关的过程的关注较少。在这项研究中，我们通过数量性状位点（QTL）分析，试图鉴定与丝状真菌粗糙脉孢菌纤维素糖化和葡萄糖发酵变异性相关的基因组位点。我们鉴定出一个主要的 QTL 有助于葡萄糖发酵，以及多个潜在的 QTL 有助于糖化。了解主要 QTL 基因的自然变异将为开发用于生物乙醇生产的工业微生物提供新的见解。
