Biotechnology is rapidly coming of age as enabling technology for the production of biobased chemicals and biofuels. In this task, it is aided by critical advancements in Metabolic Engineering that transforms microbes into little chemical factories capable of converting renewable feedstocks to a variety of products. While in earlier years this application was limited to specialized chemicals and pharmaceutical products, recent advances in metabolic engineering have expanded the portfolio of biotechnological applications beyond the space of specialty products and into the domain of commodity chemicals that have been traditionally the realm of chemical process industry using fossil fuels as feedstocks. As such, we are witnessing a process of creative destruction whereby one manufacturing technology based on chemistry is gradually being replaced by another based on biology.<br/>Engineering microbes, however, for real industrial applications requires more than just the assembly of the genes comprising a biosynthetic pathway. The capacity of the pathway must be assessed vis a vis alternative routes, along with its thermodynamics and possible bottlenecks and its performance in bioreactor environments. Alternative feedstocks should be evaluated to identify the one that can be fully utilized for the production of the product. In this regard, toxicity issues are important and they must be dealt with at levels of relevance to a bioprocess environment. These concepts and tools will be illustrated in this talk with an example from the engineering of oleaginous yeast for lipid synthesis and green diesel production. I will then expand on the parameters that will define the winners and losers of the antagonism between chemistry and biotechnology whose ultimate result will be efficient processes for the <i>sustainable</i> manufacturing of products needed by current society.

What does it take to engineer microbes for industrial applications?

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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