Ethanol production by <i>Fusarium oxysporum</i> mutants pBARGPE1-Hxt-5, pBARGPE1-Hxt-6, pBARGPE1-1 and wild type strain 11C during (A) the consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) of alkali treated wheat straw and (B) the fermentation of glucose.

<p>For CBP, the shake flask cultivation of delignified straw were conducted as essentially described by Christakopoulos et al. <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0054701#pone.0054701-Christakopoulos2" target="_blank">[9]</a> with varying length of the oxygen limiting growth phase. Glucose fermentation was carried out in 100 ml conical flask containing 30 ml minimal media <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0054701#pone.0054701-Leung1" target="_blank">[51]</a> supplemented with 10 mM glucose. For the initial aerobic growth phase, medium was inoculated with fungal spores (10⁵ ml⁻¹), plugged with sterile cotton wool and incubated at 30°C in a shaking incubator for 24 h at 150 rpm under dark. Thereafter, flasks were plugged with cork and sealed with parafilm and incubated at 50 rpm, 30°C for different time points. Ethanol produced in both the cultures was estimated using QuantiChrom™ Ethanol Assay Kit (DIET-500) (BioAssay Systems, USA) according to manufacturer’s instruction. Results are based on two experiments, each with three replicates per strain/mutant per medium. Bars indicate the SEM (LSD_0.05 A = 25.06, LSD_0.05 B = 29.67).