• KSBB Journal
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.155-164
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• 2014

Succinic acid, a representative biomass-derived platform chemical, is a major fermentation product of Actinobacillus succinogenes. It is well known that carbon dioxide is consumed during the succinate fermentation, but the biochemical mechanism behind this phenomenon is not yet understood well. In this study, it was found that the addition of carbonic anhydrase (CA)s into media significantly enhances the succinic acid production by A. succinogenes during the fermentation supplied with carbon dioxide. It is likely that the (bi) carbonate produced by the CA activity from gaseous carbon dioxide is favoured by A. succinogenes for consumption and utilization. Therefore, the $MgCO_3$ requirement could be significantly reduced without compromising the succinate productivity. Furthermore, because of too high price of the commercial carbonic anhydrase, it was undertaken to economically overproduce a cyanobacterial carbonic anhydrase by the use of a recombinant Pichia pastoris. An expression vector system was constructed with the carbonic anhydrase gene PCR-cloned from Cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp., and introduced into P. pastoris for fermentation studies. About 95.9 g/L of succinic acid was produced in the production medium with 30 ppm of carbonic anhydrase, approximately 2 fold higher productivity compared to the parallel process with no supplementation of the enzyme. It is expected that this method can provide a valuable way of overcoming inefficiencies inherent in gas supply during $CO_2$-based bioprocesses like succinic acid fermentation.

• KSBB Journal
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.165-178
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• 2014

Statistical medium optimization has been carried out for the production of succinic acid in anaerobic fermentations of Actinobacillus succinogenes. Succinic acid utilized as a precursor of many industrially important chemicals is a fourcarbon dicarboxylic acid, biosynthesized as one of the fermentation products of anaerobic metabolism by A. succinogenes. Through OFAT (one factor at a time) experiments, corn steep liquor (CSL), a very cheap agricultural byproduct, was found to have significant effects on enhanced production of succinic acid, when supplemented along with yeast extract. Hence, using these factors including glucose as a carbon/energy source, interactive effects were investigated through $2^n$ full factorial design (FFD) experiments, showing that the concentration of each component (i.e., glucose, yeast extract and CSL) should be higher. Further statistical experiments were conducted along the steepest ascent path, followed by response surface method (RSM) in order to find out optimal concentrations of each constituent. Consequently, optimized concentrations of glucose, yeast extract and CSL were observed to be 180 g/L, 15.08 g/L and 20.75 g/L respectively (10 g/L of $NaHCO_3$ and 100 g/L of $MgCO_3$ to be supplemented as bicarbonate suppliers), with the estimated production level of succinic acid to be 92.9 g/L (about 3.5 fold higher productivity as compared to the initial medium). Notably, the RSM-estimated production level was almost similar to the amount of succinic acid (92.9 g/L vs. 89.1 g/L) produced through the actual fermentation process performed using the statistically optimized production medium.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.21 no.12
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• pp.1257-1263
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• 2011

This paper is dedicated to the study on the external and internal mass transfers of glucose for succinic acid fermentation under substrate and product inhibitions using a bioreactor with stirred bed of immobilized Actinobacillus succinogenes cells. By means of the substrate mass balance for a single particle of biocatalysts, considering the kinetic model adapted for both inhibitory effects, specific mathematical models were developed for describing the profiles of the substrate concentration in the outer and inner regions of biocatalysts and for estimating the substrate mass flows in the liquid boundary layer surrounding the particle and inside the particle. The values of the mass flows were significantly influenced by the internal diffusion velocity and rate of the biochemical reaction of substrate consumption. These cumulated influences led to the appearance of a biological inactive region near the particle center, its magnitude varying from 0 to 5.3% of the overall volume of particles.

• 한국생물공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.222-222
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• 2003

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.20 no.8
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• pp.1219-1225
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• 2010

Actinobacillus succinogenes, a representative succinicacid-producing microorganism, is seriously inhibited by ammonium ions, thereby hampering the industrial use of A. succinogenes with ammonium-ion-based materials as the pH controller. Therefore, this study isolated an ammonium-ion-tolerant mutant of A. succinogenes using a continuous-culture technique in which all the environmental factors, besides the stress (ammonium ions), were kept constant. Instead of operating the mutant-generating system as a nutrient-limited chemostat, it was used as a nutrient-unlimited system, allowing the cells to be continuously cultured at the maximum specific growth rate. The mutants were isolated on agar plates containing the acid-base indicator bromothymol blue and a high level of ammonium ions that would normally kill the parent strain by 100%. When cultured in anaerobic bottles with an ammonium ion concentration of 354 mmol/l, the mutant YZ0819 produced 40.21 g/l of succinic acid with a yield of 80.4%, whereas the parent strain NJ113 was unable to grow. When using $NH_4OH$ to buffer the culture pH in a 3.0 l stirredbioreactor, YZ0819 produced 35.15 g/l of succinic acid with a yield of 70.3%, which was 155% higher than that produced by NJ113. In addition, the morphology of YZ0819 changed in the fermentation broth, as the cells were aggregated from the beginning to the end of the fermentation. Therefore, these results indicate that YZ0819 can efficiently produce succinic acid when using $NH_4OH$ as the pH controller, and the formation of aggregates can be useful for transferring the cells from a cultivation medium for various industrial applications.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.1369-1373
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• 2009

Succinic acid was produced by continuous fermentation of Actinobacillus succinogenes sp. 130Z in an external membrane cell recycle reactor to improve viable cell concentration and productivity. Using this system, cell concentration increased to 16.4 g/l at the dilution rate $0.2\;h^{-1}$, up to 3 times higher than that of batch culture, and the volumetric productivity of succinic acid increased up to 6.63 g/l/h at the dilution rate $0.5\;h^{-1}$, 5 times higher than that of batch fermentation. However, in the continuous culture using a high dilution rate, operational problems including severe membrane fouling and contamination by lactic acid producer were observed. Another succinic acid producer, Mannheimia succiniciproducens MBEL55E, was also utilized in this system, and the cell concentration and productivity of succinic acid at the dilution rate of $0.3\;h^{-1}$ were found to be above 3 and 2.3 times higher, respectively, compared with those obtained at the dilution rate of $0.1\;h^{-1}$. These observations give a deep insight into the process design for a continuous succinic acid production by microorganisms.