Novel Engineered E. coli Biocatalysts for Biofuel and Biochemicals Production from Pectin-Rich Biomass

Application(Product)Productionof commodity chemicals through direct fermentation of recalcitrant biomass ProblemsAddressed    (benefits/advantages)Several lines ofevidence indicate that a critical current bottleneck for the fullimplementation of E. coli in the production of biofuels and commoditybiochemical directly from biomass is the ability of this or-ganisms to convertthe sugars derived from cellulose into ethanol. The strain KO11 is a currentbench-mark ethanologenic strain. The use of this strain in the production of,for instance, cellulosic ethanol, is limited by its inability to break downpectin, a component of biomass recalcitrance. Improvement of this strain todirectly metabolize recalcitrant biomass will enable its large-scale use forthe production of biofuels.The technology described here circumvents several issues stemming from biomass recalcitrance.

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