Integrated approaches for the production of vanillin

Vanillin is the molecule responsible for the well-known vanilla aroma, and therefore one of the most used flavour components in the food and cosmetic industries. Vanillin is mostly produced via a chemical process, with only a small fraction extracted from natural sources, namely, the bean of the orchid Vanilla planifolia. The consumer demand for natural vanillin highly exceeds the amount of vanillin extracted by plant sources and new methods for the production of natural vanillin have been attempted. Biotransformation of natural substrates into vanillin is an alternative way to produce the natural flavour. Ferulic acid can be obtained by hydrolysis of the lignin fraction of plant biomasses and converted into vanillin using engineered microorganisms. Our work has been focused on solving the major challenges in obtaining preparative bioprocesses are: the availability of methods for hydrolysis and recovery of ferulic acid from biomasess, the construction of stable and productive engineered microorganisms with high tolerance towards the vanillin produced, the optimization of fermentation/biotransformation, and finally efficient protocols for vanillin recovery. Examples from our work will be presented with regards to different strategies for identifying an integrated approach for biotechnological vanillin production.