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KAIST announced a nov­el tech­no­logy to pro­duce gas­ol­ine by a meta­bol­ic­ally-engin­eered microorganism

07.10.2013
For many dec­ades, we have been rely­ing on fossil resources to pro­duce liquid fuels such as gas­ol­ine, dies­el, and many indus­tri­al and con­sumer chem­ic­als for daily use. How­ever, increas­ing strains on nat­ur­al resources as well as envir­on­ment­al issues includ­ing glob­al warm­ing have triggered a strong interest in devel­op­ing sus­tain­able ways to obtain fuels and chem­ic­als. Gas­ol­ine, the pet­ro­leum-derived product that is most widely used as a fuel for trans­port­a­tion, is a mix­ture of hydro­car­bons, addit­ives, and blend­ing agents. The hydro­car­bons, called alkanes, con­sist only of car­bon and hydro­gen atoms. Gas­ol­ine has a com­bin­a­tion of straight-chain and branched-chain alkanes (hydro­car­bons) con­sisted of 4 – 12 car­bon atoms linked by dir­ect car­bon-car­bon bonds. Pre­vi­ously, through meta­bol­ic engin­eer­ing of Escheri­chia coli (E. coli), there have been a few research res­ults on the pro­duc­tion of long-chain alkanes, which con­sist of 13 – 17 car­bon atoms, suit­able for repla­cing dies­el. How­ever, there has been no report on the micro­bi­al pro­duc­tion of short-chain alkanes, a pos­sible sub­sti­tute for gas­ol­ine. In the paper (entitled ​“Micro­bi­al Pro­duc­tion of Short-chain Alkanes”) pub­lished online in Nature on Septem­ber 29, a Korean research team led by Dis­tin­guished Pro­fess­or Sang Yup Lee of the Depart­ment of Chem­ic­al and Bio­molecu­lar Engin­eer­ing at the Korea Advanced Insti­tute of Sci­ence and Tech­no­logy (KAIST) repor­ted, for the first time, the devel­op­ment of a nov­el strategy for micro­bi­al gas­ol­ine pro­duc­tion through meta­bol­ic engin­eer­ing of E. coli. The research team engin­eered the fatty acid meta­bol­ism to provide the fatty acid deriv­at­ives that are short­er than nor­mal intra­cel­lu­lar fatty acid meta­bol­ites, and intro­duced a nov­el syn­thet­ic path­way for the bio­syn­thes­is of short-chain alkanes. This allowed the devel­op­ment of plat­form E. coli strain cap­able of pro­du­cing gas­ol­ine for the first time. Fur­ther­more, this plat­form strain, if desired, can be mod­i­fied to pro­duce oth­er products such as short-chain fatty esters and short-chain fatty alco­hols.

In this paper, the Korean research­ers described detailed strategies for

  • screen­ing of enzymes asso­ci­ated with the pro­duc­tion of fatty acids,
  • engin­eer­ing of enzymes and fatty acid bio­syn­thet­ic path­ways to con­cen­trate car­bon flux towards the short-chain fatty acid pro­duc­tion, and
  • con­vert­ing short-chain fatty acids to their cor­res­pond­ing alkanes (gas­ol­ine) by intro­du­cing a nov­el syn­thet­ic path­way and optim­iz­a­tion of cul­ture conditions. 
Fur­ther­more, the research team showed the pos­sib­il­ity of pro­du­cing fatty esters and alco­hols by intro­du­cing respons­ible enzymes into the same plat­form strain. Pro­fess­or Sang Yup Lee said, ​“It is only the begin­ning of the work towards sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion of gas­ol­ine. The titer is rather low due to the low meta­bol­ic flux towards the form­a­tion of short-chain fatty acids and their deriv­at­ives. We are cur­rently work­ing on increas­ing the titer, yield and pro­ductiv­ity of bio-gas­ol­ine. Non­ethe­less, we are pleased to report, for the first time, the pro­duc­tion of gas­ol­ine through the meta­bol­ic engin­eer­ing of E. coli, which we hope will serve as a basis for the meta­bol­ic engin­eer­ing of microor­gan­isms to pro­duce fuels and chem­ic­als from renew­able resources.” This research was sup­por­ted by the Advanced Bio­mass Research and Devel­op­ment Cen­ter of Korea through the Glob­al Fron­ti­er Research Pro­gram of the Min­istry of Sci­ence, ICT and Future Plan­ning (MSIP) through the Nation­al Research Found­a­tion (NRF), Repub­lic of Korea. Sys­tems meta­bol­ic engin­eer­ing work was sup­por­ted by the Tech­no­logy Devel­op­ment Pro­gram to Solve Cli­mate Changes on Sys­tems Meta­bol­ic Engin­eer­ing for Biore­finer­ies by MSIP through NRF.

Ori­gin­al publication:

Choi, Yong Jun; Lee, Sang Yup. Micro­bi­al pro­duc­tion of short-chain alkanes. Nature, 2013/​09/​29/​online, http://​dx​.doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​3​8​/​n​a​t​u​r​e​12536 Source: Korea Advanced Insti­tute of Sci­ence and Tech­no­logy (KAIST)/EurekAlert!
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