Classical strain improvement genomics

Classical strain improvement can be used, for example, to address the regulation of an amino acid by selecting mutants that are able to grow in the presence of a mimic that has similar regulation characteristics. The classical approach involves random mutagenesis and addresses the whole genome. Hence, the phenotype is primarily targeted and the actual mechanism is not easily subjected to rational control. 

One of the drawbacks in the current commercial fermentation process is that the predominant form of the product is the deprotonated lactate rather than lactic acid, requiring more expensive and wasteful product purification steps. This is because the Lactobacillus fermentation operates at a minimum pH of 5.0-5.5 which is above the pA a of lactic acid (3.87). To overcome this limitation, a powerful strain improvement method, genome shuffling, was used to improve the acid tolerance of a poorly characterized industrial strain of LactobacillusA population of strains with subtle improvement in pH tolerance was isolated using classical strain improvement methods such as chemostats, and were then shuffled by recursive pool-wise protoplast fusion to create mutant strains that grow at substantially lower pH than does the wild-type strain. 

Classical Strain Improvement and Whole Genome Sequencing 131... 

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