Heterologous production of rhamnolipid in recombinant strains of Pseudomonas putida KT2440.

• Grant number: 15/18871-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: November 16, 2015
• End date: April 15, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Microbiology - Applied Microbiology
• Principal Investigator: José Gregório Cabrera Gomez
• Grantee: Jhoanne Hansen
• Supervisor: Pablo Ivan Nikel
• Host Institution: Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas (ICB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Spain
• Associated to the scholarship: 14/00783-8 - Rhamnolipids production by recombinant strain using agroindustrial waste as an alternative carbon source., BP.PD

Abstract

Rhamnolipids are a class of glycolipid biosurfactants in which the structure consist of a lipophilic portion usually composed of hydrocarbon chains with one or more fatty acids (which may be saturated, unsaturated, hydroxylated or branched), bond to a hydrophilic portion, a rhamnose. It is widely used in various industrial processes, from the food to the petrochemical industry. The main limitation factor for the use of this biosurfactant is the high cost of production, which makes its biological product not economically competitive as compared to similar compounds of chemical origin .A strategy to reduce costs of production of this compound is to obtain mutants or recombinant microbial strains with high potential to synthesize rhamnolipidic. For this, various tools of molecular biology and metabolic engineering are used. The proposed project involves the production of rhamnolipids used from heterologous recombinant strain of P. putida, in which some genes (considered expendable from the standpoint of bioprocesses), have been silenced. At the same time, the related rhamnolipid biosynthesis genes will be amplified and inserted into appropriate plasmids for expression of the hybrid operon rhlABC. In addition, the genes involved in the synthesis of the flagella will be investigated in order to relate their expression with rhamnolipid production .