The path to next generation biofuels: successes and challenges in the era of synthetic biology

Microbial Cell Factories

Review

Fabio Fava¹  Clementina Dellomonaco²  Ramon Gonzalez³ 

[1] Department of Applied Chemistry and Material Science, University of Bologna, Italy;Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA;Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA;Department of Bioengineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA;

关键词: Xylose;    Ethanol Yield;    Metabolic Engineering;    Synthetic Biology;    Butanol Production;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-2859-9-3

 received in 2009-09-24, accepted in 2010-01-20,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

Volatility of oil prices along with major concerns about climate change, oil supply security and depleting reserves have sparked renewed interest in the production of fuels from renewable resources. Recent advances in synthetic biology provide new tools for metabolic engineers to direct their strategies and construct optimal biocatalysts for the sustainable production of biofuels. Metabolic engineering and synthetic biology efforts entailing the engineering of native and de novo pathways for conversion of biomass constituents to short-chain alcohols and advanced biofuels are herewith reviewed. In the foreseeable future, formal integration of functional genomics and systems biology with synthetic biology and metabolic engineering will undoubtedly support the discovery, characterization, and engineering of new metabolic routes and more efficient microbial systems for the production of biofuels.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Dellomonaco et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.