2,3-butanediol is known to be a platform chemical with several potential industrial applications. Sustainable industrial scale production can be attained by using a sugarcane molasses based fermentation process using Bacillus subtilis. However, the accumulation of acetoin needs to be reduced to improve process efficiency. In this work, B. subtilis was genetically modified in order to increase the yield of 2,3-butanediol. Metabolic engineering strategies such as cofactor engineering and overexpression of the key enzyme butanediol dehydrogenase were attempted. Both the strategies individually led to a statistically significant increase in the 2,3-butanediol yields for sugarcane molasses based fermentation. Cofactor engineering led to a 26 % increase in 2,3-butanediol yield and overexpression of bdhA led to a 11 % increase. However, the combination of the two strategies did not lead to a synergistic increase in 2,3-butanediol yield.
Keywords: 2,3-butanediol; Bacillus subtilis; Cofactor engineering; Enzyme overexpression; Sugarcane molasses.