Recently the use of isoprenoids as biofuels has been explored and has shown a great possibility especially with their great cold weather property to be used as Diesel or Jet fuel alternatives. We have designed and identified isoprenoid compounds, specifically sesquiterpene (C15) bisabolene as a potential biofuel precursor, verified the fuel properties of the target fuel derived from this compound, and then built a heterologous biosynthetic pathway for biofuel production in E. coli and S. cerevisiae hosts. Since our first report of this advanced biofuel in 2011, we have pursued synthetic biology approaches to engineer the metabolic pathway for fuel production and to implement useful synthetic biology tools for titer and yield improvement.In this presentation, we present a couple of inducer-free bisabolene production systems we have developed using Quorum Sensing (QS) and also a dynamic control of engineered metabolic pathways in E. coil. We also present the recent efforts to scale-up this biofuel precursor from small scale shake flasks to large scale fermenters.

Sesquiterpene (C15) biofuel production: From synthetic biology to scale-up

247th National Meeting (2014)

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