Abstract

Recently, an increasing interest in “green” processes for the production of chemicals was observed. An attractive solution is microbial fermentation processes which use renewable feedstocks such as glycerol. However, this kind of synthesis has several limitations, among others a small range of products, low productivities, as well as difficulty in recovery and purification of products. One way to overcome these limitations is the application of metabolic engineering. This paper is a review of 1,3-Propanediol (1,3-PD) characteristic and applications, of microorganisms which ferment glycerol to 1,3-PD and their metabolic pathways, and finally of the metabolic engineering methods for the microbial conversion of raw glycerol to 1,3-PD.

Key words: Fermentation, glycerol, metabolic engineering, 1,3-PD.