Abstract:Abstract:Propionic acid, an important three-carbon organic acid, holds significant application value in food, chemical, and pharmaceutical synthesis industries. Microbial fermentation for propionic acid production has emerged as a crucial research direction in the field of propionic acid biosynthesis. In this study, the wild-type Propionibacterium jensenii strain PA2 was utilized as the progenitor strain. Initial fermentation parameters were established, followed by iterative space mutagenesis and ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) chemical mutagenesis coupled with high-efficiency screening. It was demonstrated that the iteratively mutagenized strain DJ04-16 achieved propionic acid production of 31.78 g·L?1 under screening conditions, representing a 31.27% increase over PA2. Through orthogonal optimization, the optimal fermentation medium was determined as: glucose (30 g·L?1), glycerol (35 g·L?1), peptone (9 g·L?1), yeast extract (10 g·L?1), FeSO? (80 mg·L?1), calcium pantothenate (0.8 mg·L?1), biotin (0.8 mg·L?1), MgSO? (160 mg·L?1), K?HPO? (2 g·L?1), KH?PO? (1 g·L?1), and corn steep liquor (8 g·L?1). When cultivated in this optimized medium, strain DJ04-16 produced 33.75 g·L?1 propionic acid after 144 h of fermentation. The synergistic combination of space and chemical mutagenesis was demonstrated to significantly improve propionic acid productivity in P. jensenii. The developed mutant DJ04-16 exhibits considerable potential for industrial applications, providing a robust technological platform for microbial propionic acid biosynthesis.