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2,3-butanediol fermentation

traitmech:000181 · CLASS · PROPOSED

A fermentation in which microorganisms convert sugars to acetoin and 2,3-butanediol neutral end products through the butanediol pathway.

Trait evidence (3)

  • DOI:10.1186/s12934-023-02163-6
    3-Hydroxybutanone (Acetoin, AC) and 2,3-butanediol (BD) are two essential four-carbon platform compounds with numerous pharmaceutical and chemical synthesis applications. AC and BD have two and three stereoisomers, respectively, while the application of the single isomer product in chemical synthesis is superior. AC and BD are glucose overflow metabolites produced by biological fermentation from a variety of microorganisms.

    Li et al. define acetoin and 2,3-butanediol as microbial glucose-overflow fermentation products and review the enzymology of their stereoisomer formation.

  • https://asm.org/getmedia/40946f85-9357-4563-aa8a-994427efa825/Methyl-Red-and-Voges-Proskauer-Test-Protocols.pdf
    Bacteria fermenting sugars via the butanediol pathway produce acetoin (i.e., acetyl methyl carbinol or 3-hydroxybutanone) as an intermediate which can be further reduced to 2,3-butanediol.

    The ASM methyl-red/Voges-Proskauer protocol distinguishes the butanediol fermentation pathway by acetoin formation with further reduction to 2,3-butanediol.

  • DOI:10.1007/s00253-014-5526-9
    Klebsiella pneumoniae is known to produce meso-2,3-butanediol and 2S,3S-butanediol, whereas 2R,3R-butanediol was detected in the culture broth of K. pneumoniae CGMCC 1.6366.

    Chen et al. directly studied 2,3-butanediol stereoisomer formation by K. pneumoniae, supporting this species as a canonical 2,3-butanediol fermenter.

Provenance

Identifier source
TraitMech local identifier
Definition source
DOI:10.1186/s12934-023-02163-6

Parent traits (1)

Synonyms (1)

  • butanediol fermentation RELATED_SYNONYM · https://asm.org/getmedia/40946f85-9357-4563-aa8a-994427efa825/Methyl-Red-and-Voges-Proskauer-Test-Protocols.pdf

kg-microbe context

No kg-microbe node embedding matched this record in the 2026-04-25 deepwalk.

Canonical examples (1)

Organisms cited as exemplars of this trait. Taxon ids are NCBITaxon and link out to the NCBI record.

Discussions and Knowledge Gaps (1)

Open questions attached to this trait. Seeded by just knowledge-gap-scan and curated; see the corpus-wide index.

Resolve an exact external ontology class for 2,3-butanediol fermentation before adding a TraitRecord xref.

CURATION TODO OPEN butanediol-fermentation-xref-gap · raised by codex · 2026-09-14

Not yet attached to a section of this record — a curator sets attaches_to (e.g. causal_graphs#some_edge) so the gap shows beside the mechanism it concerns.

No exact GO or external metabolism class was resolved for the organism-level 2,3-butanediol fermentation phenotype; Voges-Proskauer assay terms, acetoin or butanediol chemical production reactions, and individual dehydrogenase molecular functions are shifted relative to this product-specific fermentation class.

Curation history

  1. · MINTED_TRAITMECH_ID · codex

    Minted 2,3-butanediol fermentation as a DOI- and stable-URL-backed product-specific fermentation TraitRecord after a repository-wide duplicate review covering ignored and hidden files; METPO has no exact 2,3-butanediol fermentation class yet and the placeholder is reserved in proposals/metpo_traitmech_v58.

Recorded curation sessions

  • · codex
    • CREATE — Add 2,3-butanediol fermentation

      Minted traitmech:000181 for 2,3-butanediol fermentation after an ignored-and-hidden duplicate search found no live exact TraitRecord or prior v58 proposal. Added DOI and ASM stable-URL evidence from Li et al. 2023, Chen et al. 2014, and the ASM methyl-red/Voges-Proskauer protocol; recorded butanediol fermentation as a related synonym; set Klebsiella pneumoniae as the canonical example; left the exact external ontology xref unresolved as a CURATION_TODO; and reserved METPO:1013500 in proposals/metpo_traitmech_v58.

    Read this curation session