Saccharomyces pastorianus as cell factory to improve production of fructose 1,6-diphosphate using novel fermentation strategies

Enzymatic phosphorylation of glucose with inorganic phosphate, mediated by permeabilized yeast cells, is one of the methods commonly used to manufacture fructose 1,6-diphosphate, a compound of pharmaceutical interest. This process requires high concentrations of yeast active biomass, that is the catalyst of bioconversion of glucose and inorganic phosphate into fructose 1,6-diphosphate. In this study we firstly describe the high cell density production of a brewer's Saccharomyces strain (Saccharomyces pastorianus DSM 6581), focusing on the optimization of medium composition and exploiting fed-batch strategies and novel technologies based on membrane bioreactors. In fed-batch fermentation an appropriate exponential feed profile was set up to maintain the glucose concentration in the bioreactor below 0.9 g·L-1, thus yielding reproducibly 58 g dry weight biomass per liter in 80 h fermentation, improving eight-fold batch processes output. In addition a higher final biomass density was reached when implementing a microfiltration strategy (70 g dry weight biomass), that led to a productivity of 2.1 gcdw·L-1·h-1, 2.4-fold the fed-batch one. Successively, this biomass was opportunely permeabilized and proved capable of catalyzing the bioconversion of glucose into fructose 1,6-diphosphate. Acting on critical parameters of the bioconversion (substrates molar ratio, catalyst concentration and permeabilization agent), fructose 1,6-diphosphate was produced, after 3 h of process, at 56.3 ± 1 g·L-1 with a yield of 80% of the theoretical value.