The sugarcane ethanol bioprocess microbiome

The sugarcane ethanol industry has replaced more than 40% of Brazil’s gasoline consumption with biologically produced ethanol, reducing global CO2 emissions by over 350 million tons. However, current fermentation yields are negatively affected by contaminant bacteria. To date, our limited understanding of these contaminants is based on targeted methods and the interplay of the microbial community as a whole remains unknown. We provide the first comprehensive survey of the microbiome and industrial parameters at each fermentation stage, applying shotgun metagenomics to over 50 industrial samples, longitudinally collected from two different mills in Brazil.