2 Escherichia coli is engineered to produce structurally tailored fatty esters (biodiesel), fatty alcohols, and waxes directly from simple sugars. Furthermore, the authors showed that engineering of the biodiesel-producing cells to express hemicellulases, a step towards producing these compounds directly from hemicellulose, a major component of plant-derived biomass.
Steen E. J. et al. (2010). Microbial production of fatty-acid-derived fuels and chemicals from plant biomass. Nature 463, 559-562.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/nature08721.html
1 Abundant plant biomass has the potential to become a sustainable source of fuels and chemicals. A high-yielding chemical process for the hydrolysis of biomass into monosaccharides is reported. This simple chemical process, which requires neither an edible plant nor a cellulase, could enable crude biomass to be the sole source of carbon for a scalable biorefinery. Binder J. B. and Raines R. T. (2010). Fermentable sugars by chemical hydrolysis of biomass. PNAS 107, 4516-4521.
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/10/4516.full?sid=22e9faab-9755-4364-9a85-2599a85cb788
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