Patent ID: 6964858

Claim:
A process for producing a sugar nucleotide, which comprises: selecting, as enzyme sources, a) a culture of a microorganism capable of producing nucleoside-5′-triphosphate (“NTP”) from a nucleotide precursor, and b) a culture of at least one strain of microorganism belonging to the genus Escherichia or Corynebacterium and having genes responsible for production of a sugar nucleotide from a sugar selected from the group consisting of glucose, fructose, galactose, glucosamine, N-acetylglucosamine, N-acetylgalactosamine, mannose, fucose and N-acetylmannosamine, and NTP; allowing the enzyme sources, the nucleotide precursor and the sugar to be present in an aqueous medium to form and accumulate the sugar nucleotide in the aqueous medium; and recovering the sugar nucleotide from the aqueous medium, wherein said cultures a) and b) are independently provided as cultures per se or treated products thereof, wherein said treated products are selected from the group consisting of a concentrated product of the culture, dried products of the culture, a culture supernatant obtained by centrifuging the culture, a concentrated product of the culture supernatant, an enzyme preparation obtained from the culture supernatant, cells obtained by centrifuging the culture, dried cells, freeze-dried cells, surfactant-treated cells, an ultrasonic-treated product of the cells, mechanically disrupted product of the cells, solvent-treated cells, enzyme-treated cells, a protein fraction of the cells, immobilized cells and an enzyme preparation obtained by extraction from the cells, and wherein the treated product of the culture continues to have said activity.