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Biotechnological production of erythritol and its applications

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Abstract

Erythritol, a four-carbon polyol, is a biological sweetener with applications in food and pharmaceutical industries. It is also used as a functional sugar substitute in special foods for people with diabetes and obesity because of its unique nutritional properties. Erythritol is produced by microbial methods using mostly osmophilic yeasts and has been produced commercially using mutant strains of Aureobasidium sp. and Pseudozyma tsukubaensis. Due to the high yield and productivity in the industrial scale of production, erythritol serves as an inexpensive starting material for the production of other sugars. This review focuses on the approaches for the efficient erythritol production, strategies used to enhance erythritol productivity in microbes, and the potential biotechnological applications of erythritol.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the 21C Frontier Microbial Genomics and Applications Center Program, Ministry of Education, Science & Technology, Republic of Korea.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Konkuk University, Seoul, 143-701, South Korea

    Hee-Jung Moon

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering, Konkuk University, Seoul, 143-701, South Korea

    Marimuthu Jeya, In-Won Kim & Jung-Kul Lee

  3. Institute of Biomedical Science and Technology, Konkuk University, Seoul, 143-701, South Korea

    Jung-Kul Lee

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  1. Hee-Jung Moon
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  2. Marimuthu Jeya
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Correspondence to Jung-Kul Lee.

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Hee-Jung Moon and Marimuthu Jeya equally contributed to this work.

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Moon, HJ., Jeya, M., Kim, IW. et al. Biotechnological production of erythritol and its applications. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 86, 1017–1025 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-010-2496-4

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