Abstract
Bioethanol, a second generation biofuel, is considered to be one of the best alternatives to conventional petroleum-based liquid fuels. In the present scenario, it is being majorly produced by fermentation of hexoses coming from the cellulosic fraction of the lignocellulosic biomass. Biomass also comprises of up to 33 % hemicellulose, therefore, its fermentation would lead to enhanced bioethanol fermentation productivities. Bioethanol can be produced through biochemical as well as thermochemical processes. A biochemical process, which is environmentally favorable involves the use of microbes, e.g., yeast and bacteria. Bioethanol production from yeast, i.e., Saccharomyces cerevisiae has already been commercialized. However, demerit of this commercially viable strain is that it utilizes only hexoses, while pentoses are left unused. This paper discusses different strategies for improving the potential of yeast strains for mixed sugar fermentation to ethanol. There are ways to genetically improve yeast strains to enable them to ferment mixture of hexoses and pentoses. However, there are several physiological hurdles which can limit the success of conventional genetic approaches like cofactor imbalance, excessive by product formation, glucose repression, etc., which need to be tackled, in order to obtain enhanced yield. Metabolic engineering of the yeast strains is a way for enhancing bioethanol fermentation efficiency.
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Shalley Sharma, Sonia Sharma, Surender Singh, Lata, Anju Arora (2016). Improving Yeast Strains for Pentose Hexose Co-fermentation: Successes and Hurdles. In: Kumar, S., Khanal, S., Yadav, Y. (eds) Proceedings of the First International Conference on Recent Advances in Bioenergy Research. Springer Proceedings in Energy. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2773-1_3
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