KaroTec

Carotenoids are valuable natural substances with yellow-red color. These compounds have excellent antioxidant and UV-protecting properties and are widely used in the cosmetics, animal feed and food (supplement) industries. In recent years, we have been able to develop a bacterial platform organism with which a large number of interesting carotenoids can be produced biotechnologically. Starting from the central intermediate lycopene, the corynebacterial metabolic pathway has been extended in a modular fashion to produce carotenoids such as the C50 carotenoid decaprenoxanthin, a UV-A absorbing pigment, and the C40 carotenoid astaxanthin, which is greatly demanded as a pigment and antioxidant. With Corynebacterium glutamicum, we harness the potential of an industrially established microorganism that meets the highest standards in terms of safety, robustness, scalability and flexibility in production and has been used for over 60 years in industrial processes on a million-ton scale for amino acid production.

The focus of the KaroTec project is on the validation of a corynebacterial platform technology for the production of natural carotenoids. The validation accounts two dimensions: 1. validation of a biotechnological fermentative process for astaxanthin production and 2. validation of the platform technology by transferring the process to decaprenoxanthin production. The validation of the platform technology provides the basis for the subsequent transfer as a universal and thus innovative biotechnological process to industrial scale (100,000 L). Today, the potential of carotenoids is by far not fully exploited - only around six carotenoid are actually used while more than 1,000 carotenoid structures are described. In the future, the platform technology will be expanded modularly and will enable an access to attractive and new carotenoids.