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Abstract
One of the important targets of industrial biotechnology is using cheap biomass resources. The traditional strategy is microbial fermentations with single strain. We explored such a consortium that couples the high cellulolytic activity of the mixed culture of bacteria to ferment hexose and pentose sugars to ethanol. Consortium stability was demonstrated by culturing the three microbes on a mixture of cellulose, as a first step towards understanding and manipulating this consortium, we developed a simple dynamic model with unstructured descriptions of enzyme synthesis, cellulose and hemicellulose degradation, sugar uptake, cell growth, and ethanol production. The present study aims to the use of the bacterial consortia for the degradation of the cellulosic waste by submerged fermentation for cellulase production. The Three bacterial strains were tested to find their ability to produce cellulases, which catalyze the degradation of cellulose, which is a linear polymer made of glucose subunits linked by β-1, 4 glycosidic bonds. All three bacterial strains was noticed to show maximum zone of hydrolysis of carboxy-methyl cellulose and four bacterial mixture (consotia) produce higher activities of the cellulases were determined by Carboxy-methly cellulase assay (CMCase). In quantification of bioethanol, bacterial species Enterobactor cloaca was most efficient and produced maximum amount of bioethanol on the fifth day of incubation, it showed 2.06 g/L ethanol titer. Further studies showed that Pseudomonas aeroginosa, Bacillus clausii, played an important role in the high ethanol productivity upto 8.80 ± 0.75 (G/L) & 9.03 ± 0.08 (G/L) respectively. And Bacterial consortia have exhibited high level of enzyme activities and pattern of ethanol production as 10.91 ± 0.49 (G/L) compared to single strain. Maximum specific activities of enzymes were obtained between 15 to 25 days of culture growth.