Rapid assessment of oxygen transfer impact for Corynebacterium glutamicum

Oxygen supply is crucial in industrial application of microbial systems, such as Corynebacterium glutamicum, but oxygen transfer is often neglected in early strain characterizations, typically done under aerobic conditions. In this work, a new procedure for oxygen transfer screening is presented, assessing the impact of maximum oxygen transfer conditions (OTRmax) within microtiter plate-based cultivation for enhanced throughput. Oxygen-dependent growth and productivity were characterized for C. glutamicum ATCC13032 and C. glutamicum DM1933 (lysine producer). Biomass and lysine product yield are affected at OTRmax below 14 mmol L(-1) h(-1) in a standardized batch process, but not by further increase of OTRmax above this threshold value indicating a reasonable tradeoff between power input and oxygen transfer capacity OTRmax. The described oxygen transfer screening allows comparative determination of metabolic robustness against oxygen transfer limitation and serves identification of potential problems or opportunities later created during scale-up.