Among the top challenges of this century is access to sources of energy that would be affordable, renewable and environmentally-friendly. A pioneering solution to overcome this challenge is to apply advanced strategies developed by synthetic biologists. The goal is to not only improve biofuel production through established sources and producers such as sun and plants, but also generate energy from alternative sources of feedstock and novel producers such as biomass and engineered microorganisms, respectively. A promising example in the latter is the transformation of lignocellulosic biomass beyond paper pulp to biofuel as a commodity product, which requires robust engineered microbial factories that can effectively depolymerize lignin.
In spite of the promising journey of lignin from a mere source for paper production to a valuable source for biofuel production, challenges in current engineered bio-chassis is hindering its application in biorefineries. Top issues include toxicity of lignin-derived aromatics generated during the biomass pretreatment that act as fermentation inhibitors, slow kinetics of uptake, and the cost of adding external substrates to induce expression of pathway enzymes. As part of an effort to address these challenges, a team of researchers in UC Berkeley proposed a novel methodology that improves production efficiency and can potentially add more than 10-fold the value gained from burning lignin for energy production.
This novel methodology was based on engineering a catechol biosynthesis pathway co-expressed with an active aromatic transporter in E. coli that enabled the bacterial factory to transport and use toxic derivatives. Therefore, by incorporating an aromatics-inducible promoter (ADH7) and a non-native transporter (CouP) into an engineered E. coli, an autoregulatory system was developed. This engineered system was capable of using lignin-derived aromatics, such as vanillin, both as the substrate and the inducer such that upon sensing levels of substrates the system could automatically overexpress the corresponding enzymes and transporters to convert substrates to value-added compounds. This novel strategy helped overcome two issues at once: toxicity of the intermediates and the need for an external inducer.
Development of this “smart SynBio chassis” moves lignin one step closer to its use in biorefineries, and also inspires other synthetic biology-based efforts where novel solutions in chemicals industry, pharmaceuticals, and food/agriculture sector are called for.
In the design, build, exam/learn cycle of microbial strain optimization and metabolic pathway engineering, the build phase is usually the most time-consuming and costly. As a worldwide provider of synthetic DNA, GenScript can help facilitate your build phase. From gene fragments and gene editing to high-throughput gene synthesis and combinatorial assembly libraries, our comprehensive synthetic biology services are here to advance your research.
One-stop, high-throughput solution
Highly-customizable
1. In pool or individual formats
2. Up to 1x108 constructs in a library
3. Up to 4 variable slots for 15 kb inserts
Faster and more economical compared to your in-house operations
Seamlessly assembled with advanced methods
Expert advising on all project plans by our Ph.D.-level scientists
