JBEI Research Highlights - July 2017

1. Metabolic engineering for advanced biofuels
production and recent advances towards
commercialization
Meadows, Corey W., Kang, Aram, & Lee, Taek Soon. (2017). "Metabolic engineering for advanced biofuels
production and recent advances towards commercialization". Biotechnology Journal, 1600433‐n/a. doi,
10.1002/biot.201600433 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/biot.201600433)
Background
Research on renewable biofuels produced by
microorganisms has enjoyed considerable
advances in academic and industrial settings. As
the renewable ethanol market approaches
maturity, the demand is rising for the
commercialization of more energy-dense fuel
targets. Many strategies implemented in recent
years have considerably increased the diversity
and number of fuel targets that can be produced
by microorganisms. Moreover, strain
optimization for some of these fuel targets has
ultimately led to their production at industrial
scale.
Significance and perspectives
In this review, we discuss recent metabolic
engineering approaches for augmenting biofuel
production derived from alcohols, isoprenoids,
and fatty acids in several microorganisms.
In addition, we discuss successful
commercialization ventures for each class of
biofuel targets.
Since the recent maturity of commercial ethanol production,
several new biofuel targets have been successfully produced on
commercial scale. In this study, the authors address recent
scientific advances in metabolic engineering toward scale up of
various targets and highlight several successful commercial
ventures.