The use of microorganisms in 1,3-Propanediol production
Keywords:
Fermentation, glycerol, metabolic engineering, 1,3-PD.Abstract
Recently, an increasing interest in “green” processes for the production of chemicals was observed. An attractive
solution is microbial fermentation processes which use renewable feedstocks such as glycerol. However, this kind
of synthesis has several limitations, among others a small range of products, low productivities, as well as difficulty
in recovery and purification of products. One way to overcome these limitations is the application of metabolic
engineering. This paper is a review of 1,3-Propanediol (1,3-PD) characteristic and applications, of microorganisms
which ferment glycerol to 1,3-PD and their metabolic pathways, and finally of the metabolic engineering methods for
the microbial conversion of raw glycerol to 1,3-PD.
