Online meeting of the LignoLIPP consortium: From LIGNOcellulose sugars to high-value LIPids and bioPolymers in a single fermentation process

Today, the partners of the Norwegian-German “Bioeconomy in the North” project LignoLIPP, which on the German side is financially supported by BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research), met online to report on the progress of the work, plan the final months of the project, and start discussing perspectives for a follow-up project. The Norwegian partners had fermented eight different Mucoromycetes fungi on different media and under different conditions. Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr and Mounashree reported on the results of their analytical work on these cell walls. Combining these results with the Norwegian analyses of the lipids produced has allowed us to identify the best suited fungal species and growth conditions for a parallel biotechnological production of precious lipids and novel, native chitosans. Mouna is currently in the process of structurally analysing these chitosans in more detail, while Dr. Rebecca Melcher and her team at Bex-BioTec have started to analyse their suitability for agricultural applications. As a result of our meeting, Prof. Volha Shapaval from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), as the coordinator of the LignoLIPP project, has compiled an impressive list of joint manuscripts for publications which we plan to submit during the next six months, as a strong basis for a follow-up project.