Vanillin Pycnoporus cinnabarinus

Bonnin, E. et al., Aspergillus niger 1-1472 and Pycnoporus cinnabarinus MUCEL 39533, selected for the biotransformation of ferulic acid to vanillin, are also able to produce cell wall polysaccharide-degrading enzymes and feruloyl esterases, Enzyme Microb. Technol, 28, 70, 2001. 

Ferulic acid is the major cinnamic acid found in a variety of plant cell walls. Com fiber contains about 3% femlic acid. Wheat bran is another source of ferulic acid (0.5-1%). Faulds et al. 226) developed a laboratory scale procedure to produce free femlic acid (5.7 g) from wheat bran (1 kg) by using a Trichoderma xylanase preparation and A, niger femlic acid esterase. Using filamentous fungi, a two-stage process for vanillin formation was developed in which a strain of A. niger was first used to convert femlic acid to vanillic acid, which was then reduced to vanillin by a laccase-deficient strain of Pycnoporus cinnabarinus 227). 

Also, a two-step process was patented in 1996 [49], employing two different filamentous fungi Aspergillus niger and Pycnoporus cinnabarinus. In the first step, A. niger transformed ferulic acid to vanillic acid, and in the second step the latter was reduced to vanillin by P. cinnabarinus [50]. The yields have been improved to over 0.5 gl adding cellobiose to the culture medium [51]. This behavior has been ascribed either to the fact that cellobiose is a more easily metabolized carbon source, required for the reduction to occur, or to its action as an inducer of cellobiose-quinone oxidoreductase, which inhibits vanillic acid decarboxylation. 

Lesage-Meessen, L., Haon, M., Delattre, M., Ihibault, J.F., Colonna Ceccaldi, B., and Ashter, M. (1997) An attempt to channel the transformation of vanillic acid into vanillin by controlling methoxyhydroquinone formation in Pycnoporus cinnabarinus with cel-lobiose. Appl. Microbiol. Biotechnol.,... 

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