Journal
JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL MICROBIOLOGY & BIOTECHNOLOGY
Volume 42, Issue 12, Pages 1581-1589Publisher
SPRINGER HEIDELBERG
DOI: 10.1007/s10295-015-1696-4
Keywords
Benzoic acids; Redox biotransformation; Aspergillus flavus; Carboxyl reduction; Oxidative; decarboxylation
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Funding
- Universidad Nacional de San Luis [PROICO 2-1412]
- Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET) [PIP 00360]
- Agencia Nacional de Promocion Cientifica y Tecnologica (ANPCyT) [PICT 1416]
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Aromatic carboxylic acids are readily obtained from lignin in biomass processing facilities. However, efficient technologies for lignin valorization are missing. In this work, a microbial screening was conducted to find versatile biocatalysts capable of transforming several benzoic acids structurally related to lignin, employing vanillic acid as model substrate. The wild-type Aspergillus flavus growing cells exhibited exquisite selectivity towards the oxidative decarboxylation product, 2-methoxybenzene-1,4-diol. Interestingly, when assaying a set of structurally related substrates, the biocatalyst displayed the oxidative removal of the carboxyl moiety or its reduction to the primary alcohol whether electron withdrawing or donating groups were present in the aromatic ring, respectively. Additionally, A. flavus proved to be highly tolerant to vanillic acid increasing concentrations (up to 8 g/L), demonstrating its potential application in chemical synthesis. A. flavus growing cells were found to be efficient biotechnological tools to perform self-sufficient, structure-dependent redox reactions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of a biocatalyst exhibiting opposite redox transformations of the carboxylic acid moiety in benzoic acid derivatives, namely oxidative decarboxylation and carboxyl reduction, in a structure-dependent fashion.
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