Extremophile myceliar fungi and their enzymes for the innovative technology to produce glucose from agro-industrial waste

Abstract

In recent years great attention is paid to the effective use of natural renewable resources.  Microorganisms are capable  to produce high-value products from agro-industrial wastes. Like other developing countries, Georgia has the opportunity to use local low-cost or commercially wasted wastes to produce various valuable products. In particular, the plant raw material is an undefined renewable source of glucose. The main component of plant biopolymers - cellulose, which is 60% of the total plant biomass, can be transformed by enzymatic hydrolyses to glucose. These process is one of the most important among other technological processes (LeeR. Lynd et all.,2002. Sanchez C.2009).

As is known, plant row materials contain the lignin, due to which it is resistant to hydrolysis. Therefore, important stage in  cellulosic wastes enzymatic hydrolysis technology is biomass pretreatment, amongst which the biological pretreatment of cellulosic wastes is the most convenient, safe and cheap method. One of the most important viable processes for the bioconversion of many cellulosic wastes is represented by white rot fungi. While growing on different  cellulosic substrates they produce unique  lignocellulolytic enzymes and can delignificate the substrates for their utilization with  high biological activity.

From  the Durmishidze Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology  collection of basidial  fungi, strains have been selected that are able to utilize lignin up to 50% in a very short  - 10 days period.

Among the culture collections of Durmishidze Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology there are microscopic fungi isolated from different ecological niches of Georgia out of which about 300 strains are extremophilic and the best producers of cellulases. As a result of project implementationl hemicellulase producer active thermophilic strains will be be selected from  the collection of the extremophilic fungi. Xylanase producer  strains which are characterized by  low cellulase activity have the potential of application for effective pretreatment of cellulosic wastes  by  removing a large part of hemicellulose  substrate. Further, highly active high temperature resistant  cellulase preparations will be selected for efficient hydrolysis of pretreated cellulose to glucose.

The overall goal of the project is development of  alternativee, low cost, low waste high productive innovation technology  of glucose production from agro industrial wastes  using active, stable enzymes fromextremophilic fungi strains.