Enrichments of Cellulolytic Communities from Diverse Natural Sources Using a Novel Selection System

In order to ensure a sustainable future and curb carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels, it is imperative to develop a cost-competitive manufacturing process for an alternative liquid fuel with low life cycle greenhouse gas emissions. A potential route towards this sustainable future is the large-scale production of fuels derived from plant biomass, biofuels. A major step for the biological conversion of biomass to fuel is the solubilization and utilization of cellulose. However, lignocellulose is a recalcitrant material, and has evolved to resist microbial degradation. Studying cellulolytic communities from nature can reveal the mechanisms by which organisms can utilize lignocellulose, and also reveal the conditions that facilitate the fastest possible rates of cellulose utilization. This thesis used an Automated Repetitive Batch (ARB) system to perform enrichments of cellulolytic communities to test if cellulolytic communities from diverse sources could be reproducibly enriched for rapid cellulose utilization. This thesis first developed a robust method for reproducibly enriching cellulolytic communities in the ARB system with a single environmental source. Using this method, this research then investigated if cellulolytic communities could be enriched for rapid cellulose utilization from different inoculum sources. In all reproducible enrichments, this thesis then confirmed the use of carbon dioxide as a real time proxy for cellulose utilization based on end product analysis. This thesis showed that the ARB system could yield cellulolytic communities capable of rapid cellulose utilization from diverse environmental sources, and laid a strong foundation for determining whether or not these different sources can be enriched to yield functionally similar cellulolytic communities. The work from this thesis also suggests that fermentation conditions, rather than source material, play a more important role in determining enriched community performance.