Using renewable lignocellulosic resources as raw materials to produce biofuels and biochemical is of great interest as they are inexpensive and available in large quantities. The efficient conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into ethanol for fuel and its polygeneration products has become a priority.

BGL is a kind of cellulase that act in cooperation to convert lignocellulose to fermentable sugars. The high cost and low titers of BGL production are major limitations in the development of feasible technologies for converting lignocellulose into biofuels and other useful chemicals.

In a study published online in Cellulose, Dr. LIANG Cuiyi, Prof. QI Wei and their colleagues from Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion (GIEC) of Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered a novel β-glucosidase (BGL) gene, and used a co-beneficial system to consume both fermented sugars and gases, so as to produce bio-ethanol and bio-succinic acid more efficiently.

Scientists cloned and characterized an organic solvent-stimulated BGL from Hypocrea sp. W₆₃ was named epB-BGL. The novel epB-BGL from Hypocrea sp. W₆₃ has a specific activity using p-nitrophenyl-β-d-glucoside (pNPG) as substrate and its activity could be stimulated with the addition of ethanol. Furthermore, other organic solvents were also able to stimulate the activity of the enzyme.

Due to this distinctive performance, epB-BGL was used to release fermentable sugars from a sugarcane bagasse hydrolysate (SCH) for ethanol and succinic acid co-production.

"This is the first successful try to use a flexible gas cultivation system based on co-fermentation with two anaerobic strains that use incomplete SCH, which may be a promising biorefinery platform,” said Prof. QI whose research team has been working on the biorefinery of lignocellulose to establish fermentable sugar and its utilization for bio-fuel and other valued chemicals for many years.