Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant form of renewable biomass in the world and substantial effort has been made in recent years to utilize lignocellulosic sugars for chemical, fuel, and cellular production. Fast pyrolysis of this biomass produces bio-oil, which is rich in sugars such as levoglucosan and xylose. In this work, we present the use of variants of levoglucosan kinase (lgk) for the production of chemicals such as lactic acid and 1,2-propanediol in lactic acid bacteria from levoglucosan. A technique developed in our laboratory for transcription factor-assisted genomic engineering in this organism expanded the carbohydrate usage to xylose, increasing the yield of these products. In addition, the ability to utilize pyrolytic sugars conveyed a substantial ecological advantage to lgk-expressing cells in the presence of levoglucosan, demonstrating the ability to control population dynamics in mixed culture using these carbon sources, with implications in both the use of these bacteria as live biotherapeutics and in industrial co-culture. Taken in total, the work represents the expansion of the substrate profile of these cells toward increased utility.
