BioChem - DOS

An Engineered Microbial Platform for Direct Biofuel Production from Brown Macroalgae

Science

Wargacki, Adam J.; Leonard, Effendi; Win, Maung Nyan; Regitsky, Drew D.; Santos, Christine Nicole S.; Kim, Peter B.; Cooper, Susan R.; Raisner, Ryan M.; Herman, Asael; Sivitz, Alicia B.; Lakshmanaswamy, Arun; Kashiyama, Yuki; Baker, David; Yoshikuni, Yasuo

<▼1><P><B>Sourced from Seaweed</B><P> Using seaweed as a raw material for biofuels has received relatively little attention, in part because their primary sugar constituent, alginate, is not readily fermented by industrially tractable microbes. Wargacki <I>et al.</I> (p. 308 ; see the cover) now demonstrate that metabolically engineered bacteria can degrade seaweed and subsequently ferment the sugars into ethanol at laboratory scale. </P></P></▼1><▼2><P>Metabolic engineering showcases a preliminary route to generating ethanol from seaweed.</P></▼2><▼3><P> Prospecting macroalgae (seaweeds) as feedstocks for bioconversion into biofuels and commodity chemical compounds is limited primarily by the availability of tractable microorganisms that can metabolize alginate polysaccharides. Here, we present the discovery of a 36-kilo-base pair DNA fragment from <I>Vibrio splendidus</I> encoding enzymes for alginate transport and metabolism. The genomic integration of this ensemble, together with an engineered system for extracellular alginate depolymerization, generated a microbial platform that can simultaneously degrade, uptake, and metabolize alginate. When further engineered for ethanol synthesis, this platform enables bioethanol production directly from macroalgae via a consolidated process, achieving a titer of 4.7% volume/volume and a yield of 0.281 weight ethanol/weight dry macroalgae (equivalent to ~80% of the maximum theoretical yield from the sugar composition in macroalgae). </P></▼3>

2012

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

0036-8075

1095-9203

335

6066

pp.308-313

10.1126/science.1214547

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