Enhanced ethanol tolerance in Lysinibacillus sp.

ABSTRACT

Alcohol-tolerant microbes are the prime requirement for industrial-scale production of biofuels and beverages.Tolerance is a complex phenomenon that is achieved by mutational changes at several points in the genome.Since a network of genes and pathways are involved in adapting to ethanol tolerance, it is, therefore, morepreferable to obtain ethanol tolerance phenotype by adaptive evolution. Adaptive evolution ensures genotypicchanges which result in the evolution of a phenotypically tolerant strain. In the present work, Lysinibacillussp. isolated from the estuarine area was subjected to adaptive evolution under ethanol stress that resulted in anincrease in ethanol tolerance from 1.6% to 6.4%.