Pseudomonas aeruginosa MTCC 7925: Biofactory for Novel SCL-LCL-PHA

Pseudomonas aeruginosa MTCC 7925, a sludge isolate, was found to accumulate a novel short-chain-length-long-chain-length (SCL-LCL) co-polymer composed of 3-hydroxybutyric acid (3HB), 3-hydroxyvaleric acid (3HV), 3-hydroxyhexadecanoic acid (3HHD) and 3-hydroxyoctadecanoic acid (3HOD) as components.The co-polymer production was enhanced to 49% on dry cell weight (dcw) under 2% ethanol-supplemented condition. A further, increase up to 78% (dcw) was observed by optimizing the critical parameters through Response Surface Methodology. When palm oil as well as its cakes were exploited as carbon sources, yield of 5.9 g/l was recorded that was almost 85-fold higher over control. The material properties of the polymer are comparable with polypropylene and polyethylene. Furthermore, synthesis of this co-polymer from ordinary unrelated carbon sources like ethanol, glucose, acetate and various plant oils like palm oil with its cakes under the same growth conditions under which other Pseudomonads including P. aeruginosa synthesize MCL-PHAs units only, opens up new possibilities of exploiting P. aeruginosa MTCC 7925 in the production of co-polymer for various industrial application.