The Research Institute for Innovative Technologies for the Earth (RITE) in Kansai Science City near Kyoto claims to have achieved a breakthrough in the microbial production of catechol, financially supported by METI’s project house NEDO within the “smart cell” program. In RITE’s and NEDO’s press releases, details to the process are missing except that a modified strain of Corynebacterium glutamicum is used as production strain and multiple basic technologies were used to improve production gradually. The metabolic sketch in the graph may provide some conceptional ideas to specialists in metabolic engineering.

RITE news release, December 2, 2020

NEDO news release, December 2, 2020