Abstract
Sustainable hydrogen production from renewable and low-cost substrates is very important to mitigate environmental and energy-related issues. Microbial consortia are promising for diverse bioenergy and environmental applications, yet microbial interactions are not fully understood. Here, we present comprehensive investigation on how two species in an artificial microbial consortium, consisting of Bacillus cereus A1 and Brevundimonas naejangsanensis B1, mutually cooperate to achieve an overall enhancement in hydrogen production and starch utilization. In this consortium, strains A1 and B1 secrete α-amylase and glucoamylase that are functionally complementary in starch hydrolysis. Moreover, strain A1 converts starch into lactate as a carbon source and electron donor, supporting the cell growth and hydrogen generation of strain B1. In return, strain B1 produces formate as an electron shuttle to strain A1 to enhance hydrogen production. The co-culture re-directs the overall metabolic flux, facilitates the cell growth, and up-regulates the key genes of hydrogen production and starch hydrolysis.
Highlights
Sustainable hydrogen production from renewable and low-cost substrates is very important to mitigate environmental and energy-related issues
We constructed an artificial two-species microbial consortium that was highly efficient for hydrogen production from corn starch
The co-culture could increase the hydrogen yield to 1.61 mol H2 per mol glucose (Fig. 1d), which may benefit from the mutual interactions of these two-species microbial consortium
Summary
Sustainable hydrogen production from renewable and low-cost substrates is very important to mitigate environmental and energy-related issues. We present comprehensive investigation on how two species in an artificial microbial consortium, consisting of Bacillus cereus A1 and Brevundimonas naejangsanensis B1, mutually cooperate to achieve an overall enhancement in hydrogen production and starch utilization. In this consortium, strains A1 and B1 secrete α-amylase and glucoamylase that are functionally complementary in starch hydrolysis. Synthetic or artificial microbial consortia, with a defined composition and controllable functions, offer a promising approach to promote operational stability, substrate utilization, and production yields[19,20]. Rotaru et al.[30] found that Geobacter metallireducens could convert ethanol to methane and directly transfer electrons to Methanosaeta harundinacea via its conductive pili, and M. harundinacea could accept electrons for the reduction of carbon dioxide to methane
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