Sustainable bio-manufacturing of D-arabitol through combinatorial engineering of Zygosaccharomyces rouxii, bioprocess optimization and downstream separation

Biosynthesis of D-arabitol, a high value-added platform chemical, from renewable carbon sources provides a sustainable and eco-friendly alternative to the chemical industry. Here, a robust brewing yeast, Zygosaccharomyces rouxii, capable of naturally producing D-arabitol was rewired through genome sequencing-based metabolic engineering. The recombinant Z. rouxii obtained by reinforcing the native D-xylulose pathway, improving reductive power of the rate-limiting step, and inhibiting the shunt pathway, produced 73.61% higher D-arabitol than the parent strain. Subsequently, optimization of the fermentation medium composition for the engineered strain provided 137.36 g/L D-arabitol, with a productivity of 0.64 g/L/h in a fed-batch experiment. Finally, the downstream separation of D-arabitol from the complex fermentation broth using an ethanol precipitation method provided a purity of 96.53%. This study highlights the importance of D-xylulose pathway modification in D-arabitol biosynthesis, and pave a complete and efficient way for the sustainable manufacturing of this value-added compound from biosynthesis to preparation.