Engineering pathways to biofuels in photoautotrophic microorganisms

Abstract

>Recent advances in the metabolic manipulation of photosynthetic microorganisms for the production of biofuels have enabled the production of a suite of targeted products. Particularly salient for the production of next-generation biofuels is leveraging recently discovered enzymes that enable the synthesis of alkanes, fatty alcohols and novel terpenoids. Titers must now be improved to realize a viable biofuels industry leveraging these organisms. Many of the achievements attained in the engineering of nonphotosynthetic organisms such as yeast and Escherichia coli are likely transferable to photosynthetic microorganisms. Combining these metabolic engineering templates with the rapidly expanding palette of novel biofuel relavent enzymes has the potential to produce a consolidated bioprocessing catalyst for the conversion of sunlight and CO₂ directly to commodity chemicals, without the need for secondary organisms

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (DE-FG02–12ER16339), and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550–11–1–0211). The author has no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.