Production of High-Purity Carotenoids by Fermenting Selected Bacterial Strains

A process for the production of high purity carotenoids using a naturally occurring bacterial strain over-producing carotenoids, or a mutant thereof, comprising:

• a) inducing a mutation in a selected naturally occurring bacterial strain which over-produces carotenoids or a mutant thereof and screening for a mutant strain with improved total carotenoid accumulation or improved accumulated fraction of single carotenoid in relation to total carotenoids;
• b) culturing said bacterial strain in a fermentation step performed as a submerged culture in a controlled bioreactor at a temperature range between 22° C. and 29° C. and a dissolved oxygen concentration below 30% saturation, and
• c) optionally extracting and purifying the intracellularly accumulated carotenoid from the obtained biomass.

High purity carotenoids obtained by the process according to claim 1.

A Sphingomonas strain M63Y characterized in that it is defined by SEQ ID No 2.

A Sphingomonas strain M63Y defined by the following biochemical and growth profile parameters:

• is Gram-negative, rod shaped and non-spore forming, growing as round, smooth, orange colonies on nutrient agar, between 20 and 30° C., with optimum growth at 27° C., containing meso-diaminopimelic acid (meso-Dpm), typical of the peptidoglycan type A1γ, having ubiquinone-10 has the major isoprenoid quinone and 18:1 w7c the major fatty acid, producing polar lipids, including sphingoglycolipids, and carotenoids, mainly beta-carotene, with a G+C content of the DNA of the strain M63Y was 66.6 mol.