Journal ArticleDOI
Microbial production of fatty-acid-derived fuels and chemicals from plant biomass
Eric J. Steen,Yisheng Kang,Gregory Bokinsky,Zhihao Hu,Andreas W. Schirmer,Amy McClure,Stephen B. del Cardayre,Jay D. Keasling +7 more
TLDR
The engineering of Escherichia coli is demonstrated to produce structurally tailored fatty esters (biodiesel), fatty alcohols, and waxes directly from simple sugars, a step towards producing these compounds directly from hemicellulose, a major component of plant-derived biomass.Abstract:
Increasing energy costs and environmental concerns have emphasized the need to produce sustainable renewable fuels and chemicals. Major efforts to this end are focused on the microbial production of high-energy fuels by cost-effective 'consolidated bioprocesses'. Fatty acids are composed of long alkyl chains and represent nature's 'petroleum', being a primary metabolite used by cells for both chemical and energy storage functions. These energy-rich molecules are today isolated from plant and animal oils for a diverse set of products ranging from fuels to oleochemicals. A more scalable, controllable and economic route to this important class of chemicals would be through the microbial conversion of renewable feedstocks, such as biomass-derived carbohydrates. Here we demonstrate the engineering of Escherichia coli to produce structurally tailored fatty esters (biodiesel), fatty alcohols, and waxes directly from simple sugars. Furthermore, we show engineering of the biodiesel-producing cells to express hemicellulases, a step towards producing these compounds directly from hemicellulose, a major component of plant-derived biomass.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Engineering the third wave of biocatalysis
Uwe T. Bornscheuer,Gjalt W. Huisman,Romas J. Kazlauskas,Romas J. Kazlauskas,Stefan Lutz,Jeffrey C. Moore,Karen Robins +6 more
TL;DR: Applications of protein-engineered biocatalysts ranging from commodity chemicals to advanced pharmaceutical intermediates that use enzyme catalysis as a key step are discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Catalytic Transformation of Lignin for the Production of Chemicals and Fuels
TL;DR: This paper presents a new state-of-the-art implementation of the iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials) Key Laborotary of Catalysis, which automates the very labor-intensive and therefore expensive and therefore time-heavy and expensive process ofalysis.
Journal ArticleDOI
Synthetic biology: applications come of age.
TL;DR: The de novo engineering of genetic circuits, biological modules and synthetic pathways is beginning to address these crucial problems and is being used in related practical applications.
Journal ArticleDOI
Microbial engineering for the production of advanced biofuels
Pamela Peralta-Yahya,Pamela Peralta-Yahya,Fuzhong Zhang,Fuzhong Zhang,Stephen B. del Cardayre,Jay D. Keasling +5 more
TL;DR: Data-driven and synthetic-biology approaches can be used to optimize both the host and pathways to maximize fuel production, and to compete with more conventional fuels.
Journal ArticleDOI
Deconstruction of lignocellulosic biomass to fuels and chemicals
TL;DR: This work focuses on overcoming recalcitrance with biochemical conversion, which uses low-severity thermochemical pretreatment followed by enzymatic hydrolysis to produce soluble sugars.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
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Journal ArticleDOI
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