Introducing molasses as an alternative feedstock into itaconate production using Ustilago sp.

In this work, we established an efficient process for the production of itaconate from the regionally sourced industrial side-stream molasses using Ustilago cynodontis and Ustilago maydis. While being relatively cheap and more environmentally friendly than refined sugars, there are some major challenges to overcome when working with molasses. Some of those challenges are a high nitrogen load, unknown impurities in the feedstock, and high amounts of ill-favoured carbon sources, such as sucrose or lactate. We could show that the activity of the sucrose-hydrolysing enzyme invertase plays a crucial role in the efficiency of the process and that the fructose utilisation differs between the two strains used in this work. Thus, with a higher invertase activity, the ability to convert fructose into the desired product itaconate, and an overall higher tolerance towards undesired substances in molasses, U. maydis is better equipped for the process on the alternative feedstock molasses than U. cynodontis. The established process with U. maydis reached competitive yields of up to 0.38 g g

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Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.