IN SILICO MODELING OF ZYMOMONAS MOBILIS AND STRAIN ENGINEERING STRATEGIES

Abstract

Bioethanol is a widely recognized alternative transportation fuel, which is expected to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels. Amongst various ethanol producers, Zymomonas mobilis has acquired some special interest because of high ethanol yield (5-10% more ethanol per fermented glucose) and tolerance to higher ethanol concentration. However, the wild type strains of Z. mobilis only metabolize hexoses (glucose, fructose, and sucrose). Thus, recent studies have focused on the designing of recombinant strains capable of fermenting pentoses obtained from the lignocellulosic hydrolysates. These studies have so far been limited to time consuming and exhaustive experiments at laboratory scale. Therefore, the use of biological models can enable a systematic approach for Z. mobilis strain improvement by combining experimental and modeling work. To this end, we reconstructed mathematical models for Z. mobilis. We further utilized the reconstructed models for proposing strain-engineering strategies.