Production of biofuels is a significant technical and commercial challenge. To compete effectively with fossil fuels, the efficiency of processes that convert sustainable feedstocks to biofuel has to be improved. Ideally, the ultimate aim is a single process that degrades the renewable feedstock quickly and delivers high titers of biofuel at a price that is competitive with equivalent fuel from fossil sources. However, the microbes that are currently being investigated for biofuel production fall into two categories: those that degrade cellulosic feedstock but cannot make biofuels effectively and those that do make biofuels but are poor at degrading the cellulosic feedstock. When biofuel production is engineered into cellulose degraders, or cellulose degradation engineered into microbes with capability to produce biofuel, another factor, lignin content (a toxic component in most sustainable feedstocks), comes into play. This review considers the latent opportunity to harness Streptomyces bacteria to address this issue.Keywords: Feedstocks; Production; Butanol; Decarbonisation; Streptomyces Theoretical and Practical Studies on the Metabolic Engineering of Streptomyces for Production of Butanols 2/4Copyright: ©2017 Doori et al.Microbes make a significant contribution to the production of biofuels [6][7]. However, the yield of product by native microbes is uneconomic, which makes it necessary to develop and improve them through strategies of systems and synthetic biology [8][9]. Alcohol producers, such as Saccharomyces cervisiae which are excellent at fermenting sugars to alcohols, cannot digest lignocelluloses. A combination of pretreatment [10,11] of the feedstock and genetic engineering of the yeast, results in utilization of the cellulose and hemi-cellulose, but hydrolysis products of lignin are toxic to yeast. Other natural alcohol producers, e,g. the bacterium Zymomonas mobilis, have similar problems of lignin toxicity.Therefore, the choice of organism(s) should be based on those that have a proven ability to degrade lignocelluloses, be impervious to toxicity of lignin and be comparatively fast growing. They should also be amenable to genetic manipulation and ideally have been used industrially for large scale fermentation. This mini-review considers the latent potential of Streptomyces bacteria to make a significant contribution to biofuel production, using biobutanol as an example. Although notable for antibiotic production, these resilient bacteria seem to have been overlooked in the context of biofuel production. Review of the Literature and DiscussionThe soil Actinomycetes are notable as being adopted by industry, particularly for large-scale production of antibiotics. Most actinomycetes do not normally produce significant quantities of alcohols. However, introduction of the key enzymes into strains can stimulate alcohol (ethanol) production. The critical enzymes are pyruvate decarboxylase and alcohol dehydrogenase. Corynebacterium glutamicum [12,13] and several Streptomyces sp. [14] have bee...
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