Biosynthesis of polyhydroxyalkanoate by Gamma proteobacterium WD-3 from volatile fatty acids

The production of copolymers of poly-β-hydroxyalkanoates (PHA) is generally a high cost process. To reduce the production costs, inexpensive carbon sources such as volatile fatty acids (VFAs) from acidified wastewater can be used. Therefore, isolation of bacterial strains that can produce PHA copolymers using VFAs as a sole carbon source would be a beneficial alternative. In this study, a strain of PHA accumulating bacterium was isolated from the wastewater treatment plant of a soybean processing facility in Harbin. The strain was identified as γ-proteobacterium according to its 16S rDNA information and was originally named as strain WD-3. The strain accumulated a mass of PHA up to 45% of its dry cell weight when it was cultured under the optimum fermentation condition in this study when butyrate was used as the carbon source. In addition, WD-3 could synthesize PHA copolymers of poly-hydroxybutyrate and poly-hydroxyvalerate (PHV) either from C-even substrates or from C-odd substrates, and one-third of the copolymer was PHV. Results from this study demonstrated that small molecule organic acids can be used by the strain of WD-3 as the carbon source for growth and PHA production. The maximum PHA yield in the study was 0.45 g g−1 dry cell.