Metabolic engineering of bacteria for utilization of mixed sugar substrates for improved production of chemicals and fuel ethanol

Abstract

Heightened concerns about dwindling cheap world oil supplies, and adverse global climate change blamed on man’s unsustainable dependence on such finite fossil fuels, have led to increased urgency in the pursuit of new and effective technologies for the production of energy and chemicals from renewable feedstocks. Among several viable renewable resources, lignocellulosic biomass has long been recognized as abundant enough to potentially meet most future demands for transportation fuels and chemicals. Before this is realized, however, sizeable advances in technologies that underpin the concept of the biorefinery must be made. As newer innovations continue to be made on the way towards industrial-scale lignocellulosic biorefineries, inefficiencies in the conversion of the pentose sugar component of lignocellulosic hydrolysates have been so prioritized in numerous experimental biological production processes as to culminate in a healthy body of literature, particularly in the last decade or so. This article aims to present the current state of metabolic engineering of bacteria for utilization of mixed sugar substrates for improved production of chemicals and fuels from lignocellulosic biomass.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to CA Omumasaba (Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth) for his critical reading of the manuscript.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This work was partially supported by a grant from the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, Japan. The authors have 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. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

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