ArticleNature2011
Engineered reversal of the β-oxidation cycle for the synthesis of fuels and chemicals.
Article in Nature, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 178 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
178 citing papers in PubMed, 603 citations in OpenAlex.
- Enhanced growth of 1-butanol producingBiodesign research · 2026Article
- Reverse beta-oxidation for biochemical production: insights into the functional properties of key enzymes.BMB reports · 2026Review
- Engineering New-to-Nature Biological Pathways for β,γ-Alkanediol Synthesis.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Metabolic and plasmid engineering to produce D-phenyllactic acid from glucose-xylose co-substrates inApplied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Bacterial metabolic signatures in MASLD predicted through gene-centric studies in stool metagenomes.BMC microbiology · 2025Article
- Suppressing Glycerol-3-phosphate Phosphatase and Enhancing Glycerol-3-Phosphate Shuttle Flux Crucial for High-Efficiency Fatty Acid Production in the Fast-Growing Oleaginous Schizochytrium.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Identification and functional characterization of a potential l-Homoserine exporter inEngineering microbiology · 2025Article
- Activation-Free Upgrading of Carboxylic Acids to Aldehydes and Alcohols.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Microbial synthesis of branched-chain β,γ-diols from amino acid metabolism.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Optimizing hexanoic acid biosynthesis in Saccharomyces cerevisiae for the de novo production of olivetolic acid.Biotechnology for biofuels and bioproducts · 2024Article
- Effect of Mixed Strains on Microbial Community and Flavor Metabolites in Fermentation Process of Chi-Flavor Baijiu.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Energy Metabolism Enhance Perylenequinone Biosynthesis inInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- Biosynthesis of C4-C8 3-Hydroxycarboxylic Acids from Glucose through the Inverted Fatty Acid β-Oxidation by Metabolically EngineeredBiomolecules · 2024Article
- Improving pathway prediction accuracy of constraints-based metabolic network models by treating enzymes as microcompartments.Synthetic and systems biotechnology · 2023Article
- Development of a Transformation System for Nitratireductor sp.Marine biotechnology (New York, N.Y.) · 2023Article
- Biosynthesis pathways of expanding carbon chains for producing advanced biofuels.Biotechnology for biofuels and bioproducts · 2023Review
- Relative Activities of the β-ketoacyl-CoA and Acyl-CoA Reductases Influence Product Profile and Flux in a Reversed β-Oxidation Pathway.ACS catalysis · 2023Article
- An optimized reverse β-oxidation pathway to produce selected medium-chain fatty acids in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.Biotechnology for biofuels and bioproducts · 2023Article
- Advances in biosynthesis of higher alcohols in Escherichia coli.World journal of microbiology & biotechnology · 2023Review
- Characteristics and Correlation of the Microbial Communities and Flavor Compounds during the First Three Rounds of Fermentation in Chinese Sauce-Flavor Baijiu.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
118 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Advanced (long-chain) fuels and chemicals are generated from short-chain metabolic intermediates through pathways that require carbon-chain elongation. The condensation reactions mediating this carbon-carbon bond formation can be catalysed by enzymes from the thiolase superfamily, including β-ketoacyl-acyl-carrier protein (ACP) synthases, polyketide synthases, 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA synthases, and biosynthetic thiolases. Pathways involving these enzymes have been exploited for fuel and chemical production, with fatty-acid biosynthesis (β-ketoacyl-ACP synthases) attracting the most attention in recent years. Degradative thiolases, which are part of the thiolase superfamily and naturally function in the β-oxidation of fatty acids, can also operate in the synthetic direction and thus enable carbon-chain elongation. Here we demonstrate that a functional reversal of the β-oxidation cycle can be used as a metabolic platform for the synthesis of alcohols and carboxylic acids with various chain lengths and functionalities. This pathway operates with coenzyme A (CoA) thioester intermediates and directly uses acetyl-CoA for acyl-chain elongation (rather than first requiring ATP-dependent activation to malonyl-CoA), characteristics that enable product synthesis at maximum carbon and energy efficiency. The reversal of the β-oxidation cycle was engineered in Escherichia coli and used in combination with endogenous dehydrogenases and thioesterases to synthesize n-alcohols, fatty acids and 3-hydroxy-, 3-keto- and trans-Δ(2)-carboxylic acids. The superior nature of the engineered pathway was demonstrated by producing higher-chain linear n-alcohols (C ≥ 4) and extracellular long-chain fatty acids (C > 10) at higher efficiency than previously reported. The ubiquitous nature of β-oxidation, aldehyde/alcohol dehydrogenase and thioesterase enzymes has the potential to enable the efficient synthesis of these products in other industrial organisms.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.