Sheetal Singh
A substantial and underused resource for the creation of sugars and biofuels is lignocellulosic biomass. Economically, this method is difficult because to the structural complexity of lignocellulosic biomass and the requirement for several pretreatment and enzymatic stages for sugar release. Here, we describe a unique method for employing the anaerobic fungus isolate strain C1A to directly convert lignocellulosic biomass to sugars and biofuels in a single container without the use of exogenous enzymes. In this method, the strain C1A's saccharolytic and fermentative activities are promptly inhibited and decoupled, causing a buildup of the sugar monomers glucose and xylose in the culture medium. Escherichia coli strain K011 then turns the generated sugars—along with the fungal hyphal lysate—into ethanol. The high ethanol yield was attained as a result of strains K011 completely converting sugars to ethanol, strain C1A accumulating ethanol as a minor fermentation end product during its initial growth phase, and strain K011 possibly converting unidentified substrates in strain C1A's hyphal lysate to ethanol. An innovative, adaptable, and exogenous enzymefree method for producing direct biofuel from lignocellulosic biomass is presented in this paper. It makes use of a hitherto underutilised class of organisms called anaerobic fungus.