During the last decades of the 20th century, biotechnology and biochemical engineering have brought to light sugars as alternative raw-materials to produce a wide range of biobased chemicals aiming for a place of their own in the world chemical market. It is therefore natural that the United States Department of Energy (US DOE) has identified several biobased chemicals as market opportunities for reducing fossil fuel dependency in the chemical industry. These 15 compounds have in common their versatility, as they are often building blocks for other added value chemicals. Succinic acid, a dicarboxylic acid, has been used as a precursor for many industrially important chemicals as shown in Figure 1. Over the last decade, much progress has been made on the development of a bio-based process for succinic acid(cas:110-15-6) production that can ultimately become competitive with the conventional chemical process. And therefore it was identified as one of the top candidates as an alternative to oil-derived bulk chemicals. The scope of this work is to show how succinic acid(cas:110-15-6) can be produced in a cost-effective way from glucose by fed-batch fermentation using recombinant Corynebacterium glutamicum ΔldhA-pCRA717 (Okino, et al. 2008).

Briefly a method of producing succinic acid(cas:110-15-6) from industrial-grade hydrolysates is provided, comprising: supplying an organism that contains mutations for the genes ptsG, pflB, and ldhA; allowing said organism to accumulate biomass; and allowing said organism to metabolize the hydrolysate.

Also provided is a bacteria mutant characterized in that it produces succinic acid(cas:110-15-6) from substrate contained in industrial-grade hydrolysate in a ratio of between 0.6:1 and 1.3:1 succinic acid to substrate (e.g., between 0.6 and 1.3 grams succinic acid per gram of total sugar consumed).