Strategies for the production of biochemicals in bioenergy crops

Abstract

Industrial crops are grown to produce goods for manufacturing. Rather than food and feed, they supply raw materials for making biofuels, pharmaceuticals, and specialty chemicals, as well as feedstocks for fabricating fiber, biopolymer, and construction materials. Therefore, such crops offer the potential to reduce our dependency on petrochemicals that currently serve as building blocks for manufacturing the majority of our industrial and consumer products. In this review, we are providing examples of metabolites synthesized in plants that can be used as bio-based platform chemicals for partial replacement of their petroleum-derived counterparts. Plant metabolic engineering approaches aiming at increasing the content of these metabolites in biomass are presented. In particular, we emphasize on recent advances in the manipulation of the shikimate and isoprenoid biosynthetic pathways, both of which being the source of multiple valuable compounds. Implementing and optimizing engineered metabolic pathways for accumulation of coproducts in bioenergy crops may represent a valuable option for enhancing the commercial value of biomass and attaining sustainable lignocellulosic biorefineries.

Expression of a bacterial 3-dehydroshikimate dehydratase (QsuB) reduces lignin and improves biomass saccharification efficiency in switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.)

“…Finally, it is promising to observe that the QsuB engineering strategy has the potential to enhance PCA titers in switchgrass biomass because several techno-economic analyses demonstrated the benefits of producing co-products in planta to render bioenergy crops economically sustainable [ 1 , 24 , 25 ]. In fact, several studies have already reported on the use of PCA as carbon source or pathway intermediate for the biological synthesis of diverse valuable products such as beta-ketoadipic acid, muconolactone, muconic acid, 2-pyrone-4,6-dicarboxylic acid, bisabolene, and methyl ketones [ 22 , 26 – 30 ].…”

Enzyme Complexes of Ptr4CL and PtrHCT Modulate Co-enzyme A Ligation of Hydroxycinnamic Acids for Monolignol Biosynthesis in Populus trichocarpa

“…Many strategies have been successfully deployed to reduce the recalcitrance of the cell walls to improve biomass utilization by identifying natural variants (MacKay et al, 1997;Studer et al, 2011;Chanoca et al, 2019) or by genetic manipulation of the relative abundance of the monolignol biosynthetic enzymes (Eckardt, 2002;Baucher et al, 2003;Vanholme et al, 2008;Weng et al, 2008;Poovaiah et al, 2014;Peña-Castro et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2018). Conversion of lignin to valued-added bioproducts has also been proposed by lignin valorization (Ragauskas et al, 2014;Upton and Kasko, 2016; Gillet et al, 2017) and lignin manipulation (Welker et al, 2015;Lin and Eudes, 2020).…”

Towards a Miniaturized Culture Screening for Cellulolytic Fungi and Their Agricultural Lignocellulosic Degradation

“…The utilization of waste biomass is not only a carbon neutral process but such resources can also be considered inexpensive, abundant and sustainable [3]. Lignocellulosic biomasses, i.e., sugarcane bagasse and trash and wheat straw and rice straw, can be used to produce a wide range of biobased chemicals used in biofuels and construction [4,5]. The integration of lignocellulosic residues into the circular economy can scale up sustainable bioproducts, bioenergy development and biotechnological interest [6][7][8].…”