Metabolic engineering of microorganisms for biofuels production: from bugs to synthetic biology to fuels

Abstract

The ability to generate microorganisms that can produce biofuels similar to petroleum-based transportation fuels would allow the use of existing engines and infrastructure and would save an enormous amount of capital required for replacing the current infrastructure to accommodate biofuels that have properties significantly different from petroleum-based fuels. Several groups have demonstrated the feasibility of manipulating microbes to produce molecules similar to petroleum-derived products, albeit at relatively low productivity (e.g. maximum butanol production is around 20 g/L). For cost-effective production of biofuels, the fuel-producing hosts and pathways must be engineered and optimized. Advances in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology will provide new tools for metabolic engineers to better understand how to rewire the cell in order to create the desired phenotypes for the production of economically viable biofuels.

Modular optimization of multi-gene pathways for fatty acids production in E. coli

“…Consistent with previous studies, fatty acyl-ACP thioesterase has been identified as the major determinant of the chain length and level of saturated fatty acids in plants 35 . Tailor-made derivatives of such medium chain fatty acids could potentially be used as jet fuel supplements due to their extremely low freezing point and high energy density 36 .…”

ACEMBL Tool-Kits for High-Throughput Multigene Delivery and Expression in Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic Hosts

“…This can then be exploited for the improved production, up to fermenter scale, of protein therapeutics such as monoclonal antibodies, commodity chemicals such as vitamins or rare amino acids, valuable metabolites, biomolecules eliciting fragrances and flavors, rare natural (medicinal) compounds (such as artemisinin and taxol) or even biofuel production [74][75][76][77][78]. While some constraints can be overcome by optimizing culture conditions, others can more successfully be tackled by modifying defined metabolic pathways.…”

Design-driven, multi-use research agendas to enable applied synthetic biology for global health

“…lycopene is the red color in tomatoes) and smells (e.g. limonene is a component of lemon scent), while others are pharmacologically-active or have chemical properties that make them good candidates for bio-based diesel and jet fuel replacements (Lee et al 2008). Because isoprenoids are structurally-and functionally-diverse, the artemisinin production systems are very good case studies in multi-use synthetic biology.…”