Towards complete carbon utilization: Improved methane yield from formate and hydrogen co-feeding through constitutive formate dehydrogenase-gene expression in Methanothermobacter thermautotrophicus ΔH

Abstract Formate is emerging as an important molecule in carbon capture and utilization technologies. However, its low electron density makes formate less attractive for energy storage. Some hydrogenotrophic methanogens can reduce formate to methane, thereby upgrading it into an established energy carrier. The bottleneck in this process is that 75% of the carbon is lost as carbon dioxide, and achieving a complete formate-to-methane conversion requires co-feeding hydrogen. However, hydrogen-dependent genetic regulation of formate metabolism inhibits simultaneous formate and hydrogen utilization in hydrogenotrophic methanogens. Here, we compared the catalytic performance of the genetically modified strain Methanothermobacter thermautotrophicus ΔH (pFdh) with M. thermautotrophicus Z-245 by conducting continuous cultivation at different hydrogen concentrations. While M. thermautotrophicus Z-245 is a natural formatotroph, M. thermautotrophicus ΔH (pFdh) was engineered to enable formate utilization via episomal expression of a formate dehydrogenase-gene cassette. We found that M. thermautotrophicus ΔH (pFdh) can simultaneously utilize formate and hydrogen. It continuously consumed formate at ≈ 0.1 mM dissolved hydrogen, enabling a 75.6% formate-to-methane conversion efficiency. M. thermautotrophicus Z-245 showed a declining formate consumption at ≈ 0.016 mM and only reached a maximum stable efficiency of 36.3%. These results suggest that M. thermautotrophicus ΔH (pFdh) is largely insensitive to hydrogen-induced genetic regulation; however, it still faces redox-related metabolic limitations at dissolved hydrogen concentrations above 0.4 mM. Overall, the findings reveal a potential strategy to circumvent hydrogen-induced regulation of formate metabolism and identify M. thermautotrophicus ΔH (pFdh) as a promising biocatalyst for formate-to-methane conversion.