Biofuel (gasoline) production by metabolically engineered Escherichia coli

Abstract

A platform E. coli strain for the productions of short-chain alkanes, FFAs, fatty esters,and fatty alcohols was developed. The fadE gene was deleted to preventthe degradation of fatty acyl-CoAs. The activity of FebH was promoted for theenhancement of the initiation of fatty acid biosynthesis by fadR gene deletion. A mutantTesA converted short chain fatty acyl-ACPs to the corresponding FFAs. The sequentialreactions of fatty acyl-CoA synthetase, fatty acyl-CoA reductase, and fatty aldehydedecarbonylase converted the short chain FFAs into corresponding alkanes. Theengineered E. coli strain produced up to 580.8 mg/L of short chain alkanes. [This workwas supported by the Advanced Biomass Research and Development Center of Korea(NRF-2010-0029799) through the Global Frontier Research Program of the Ministry ofScience, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) through the National Research Foundation(NRF). Systems metabolic engineering work was supported by the TechnologyDevelopment Program to Solve Climate Changes on Systems Metabolic Engineering forBiorefineries by MSIP through NRF].