Engineering Genetic Control to Enhance Biofuel Production
Using fuels and chemicals derived from fossil sources underpins much of our everyday life and industrialized economy. However, obtaining carbon from oil and gas presents a number of environmental, economic, and political challenges. One solution to these challenges is to derive fuels
and chemicals from renewable sources of carbon such as biomass or atmospheric carbon dioxide, thereby closing the carbon loop and moving towards a carbon neutral economy. Biological systems have evolved to harness carbon and energy from the environment for their own survival and can be engineered
to produce fuels and chemicals. Although much progress has been made in this area, we present several challenges and areas of opportunity for development. We suggest that the primary barrier to large-scale commercialization of bioderived fuels and chemicals is the availability of feedstocks,
which makes the conversion yield (feedstocks to fuels) a critical parameter in determining the impact and sustainability of biofuels processes. Engineering fuel-producing organisms to more efficiently capture carbon and energy, route metabolic fluxes to desired products, and tolerate industrial
production conditions is a significant opportunity to increase the yields and economics of biofuels.
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Keywords: 2-methyl-1-butanol; Biocatalysis; Biofuels; Butamax Advanced Biofuels; Clostridium beijerinckii; ISOPROPANOL; Ketoacid Based Biofuels; METHYL-1-BUTANOL; acetoacetyl-CoA; acetyl-CoA transferase; butanol; dynamic control; genetic control; isobutanol; low margin (bio)process/production; metabolic engineering; synthetic biology
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 01 March 2012
- Current Chemical Biology aims to publish full-length and mini reviews on exciting new developments at the chemistry-biology interface, covering topics relating to Chemical Synthesis, Science at Chemistry-Biology Interface and Chemical Mechanisms of Biological Systems.
Current Chemical Biology covers the following areas: Chemical Synthesis (Syntheses of biologically important macromolecules including proteins, polypeptides, oligonucleotides, oligosaccharides etc.; Asymmetric synthesis; Combinatorial synthesis; Diversity-oriented synthesis; Template-directed synthesis; Biomimetic synthesis; Solid phase biomolecular synthesis; Synthesis of small biomolecules: amino acids, peptides, lipids, carbohydrates and nucleosides; and Natural product synthesis).
Science at Chemistry-Biology Interface (Chemical informatics; Macromolecular catalysts and receptors; Enzymatic synthesis; Biosynthetic engineering; Combinatorial biosynthesis; Plant cell based chemistry; Bacterial and viral cell based chemistry; Chemistry of cellular processes in plants/animals; Receptor chemistry; Cell signaling chemistry; Drug design through understanding of disease processes; Synthetic biology; New high throughput screening techniques; Small molecular array fabrication; Chemical genomics; Chemical and biological approaches to carbohydrates proteins and nucleic acids design; Chemical and biological regulation of biosynthetic pathways; and Unnatural biomolecular analogs).
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