Efficient fermentative production of polymer-grade D-lactate by an engineered alkaliphilic Bacillus sp. strain under non-sterile conditions.

Background: Polylactic acid (PLA) is one important chemical building block that is well known as a biodegradable and a biocompatible plastic. The traditional lactate fermentation processes need CaCO3 as neutralizer to maintain the desired pH, which results in an amount of insoluble CaSO4 waste during the purification process. To overcome such environmental issue, alkaliphilic organisms have the great potential to be used as an organic acid producer under NaOH-neutralizing agent based fermentation. Additionally, high optical purity property in D-lactic acid is now attracting more attention from both scientific and industrial communities because it can improve mechanical properties of PLA by blending L- or D-polymer together. However, the use of low-price nitrogen source for D-lactate fermentation by alkaliphilic organisms combined with NaOH-neutralizing agent based process has not been studied. Therefore, our goal was the demonstrations of newly simplify high-optical-purity D-lactate production by using low-priced peanut meal combined with non-sterile NaOH-neutralizing agent based fermentation.
Results: In this study, we developed a process for high-optical-purity D-lactate production using an engineered alkaliphilic Bacillus strain. First, the native L-lactate dehydrogenase gene (ldh) was knocked out, and the D-lactate dehydrogenase gene from Lactobacillus delbrueckii was introduced to construct a D-lactate producer. The key gene responsible for exopolysaccharide biosynthesis (epsD) was subsequently disrupted to increase the yield and simplify the downstream process. Finally, a fed-batch fermentation under non-sterile conditions was conducted using low-priced peanut meal as a nitrogen source and NaOH as a green neutralizer. The D-lactate titer reached 143.99 g/l, with a yield of 96.09 %, an overall productivity of 1.674 g/l/h including with the highest productivity at 16 h of 3.04 g/l/h, which was even higher than that of a sterile fermentation. Moreover, high optical purities (approximately 99.85 %) of D-lactate were obtained under both conditions.
Conclusions: Given the use of a cheap nitrogen source and a non-sterile green fermentation process, this study provides a more valuable and favorable fermentation process for future polymer-grade D-lactate production.