Genome Shuffling of Aspergillus niger for Improving Transglycosylation Activity

Isomaltooligosaccharides (IMO), the glucosylsaccharides used as food additives, are made from saccharified starch by enzymes or microbial cells with transglycosylation activity. This study aimed to generate shuffled futants of Aspergillus niger with enhanced transglycosylation activity for industrial IMO production. The starting mutant population was generated by ⁶⁰Co-γ radiation; mutants with higher transglycosylation activity were selected and subjected to recursive protoplast fusion. The resulting fusants were screened by a novel high-throughput method based on detecting non-fermentable reducing sugar. After three rounds of genome shuffling, the best performing strain GS3-3 was obtained, its transglycosylation activity (14.91 U/mL) was increased by 194.1 % compared to that of original strain C-6181. In fermentor test, transglycosylation activity of GS3-3 was obtained at 16.61 U/mL. The mycelia of GS3-3 were reused ten times to produce IMO syrup from liquefied cassava starch containing about 280 g/L total sugar within 4 days. The conversion of liquefied cassava starch to IMO was at 71.3–72.1 %, which was higher than the best conversion (68 %) ever reported. GS3-3 shows a great potential for industrial IMO production.