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Biotechnology Foundation: Fermentation

Fermentation is an extremely versatile process technology for producing bioplastics in microbial biofactories. Bioplastic compositions can be varied by changing the production microbe, feedstocks, and fermentation process conditions. It allows a wide and reproducible range of different materials with very good control over their characteristics.

Metabolix has improved Bioplastics fermentations so that they accumulate over 100 g/L of Bioplastic in 40 hours or less. At the end of the fermentation, the broth consists of water, salts, and "bio-factory" cells filled with plastic, at up to 90% of their dry weight. Subsequent isolation of Bioplastics using aqueous or solvent processing yields the Bioplastic product in the form of latex or resin.

Metabolix uses the same microbial production host as is used in the production of many pharmaceuticals. This microbial system offers several benefits:

• It grows quickly without special nutrient requirements
• Its entire genomic sequence is known
• Its metabolism is well-characterized
• It lacks enzymes that degrade Metabolix Bioplastics, simplifying downstream processing
• It can generate many Bioplastic compositions, simplifying fermentation programs

Our production strains have several enzymes incorporated so as to precisely produce the Bioplastics of choice in a stable and robust way. These microbial bio-factories are stable over successive generations without the need for selective pressures such as special feeding strategies or the addition of antibiotics. Under fermentation conditions, the integrated, Bioplastic-producing pathways are sufficiently active to channel building blocks preferentially to Bioplastic production.