ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Synthesis of customized petroleum-replica fuel molecules by targeted modification of free fatty acid pools in Escherichia coli.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 64 papers.
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Who cites it
64 citing papers in PubMed, 173 citations in OpenAlex.
- Coordinated conformational changes in P450 decarboxylases enable hydrocarbons production from renewable feedstocks.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Biosynthesis pathways of expanding carbon chains for producing advanced biofuels.Biotechnology for biofuels and bioproducts · 2023Review
- Production of Fatty Acids and Derivatives Using Cyanobacteria.Advances in biochemical engineering/biotechnology · 2023Article
- Microbial pathways for advanced biofuel production.Biochemical Society transactions · 2022Review
- Insights into cyanobacterial alkane biosynthesis.Journal of industrial microbiology & biotechnology · 2022Review
- Cellulosic hydrocarbons production by engineering dual synthesis pathways in Corynebacterium glutamicum.Biotechnology for biofuels and bioproducts · 2022Article
- Metabolic engineering Yarrowia lipolytica for a dual biocatalytic system to produce fatty acid ethyl esters from renewable feedstock in situ and in one pot.Applied microbiology and biotechnology · 2021Article
- Microbial engineering to produce fatty alcohols and alkanes.Journal of industrial microbiology & biotechnology · 2021Review
- Article
- Repurposing Modular Polyketide Synthases and Non-ribosomal Peptide Synthetases for Novel Chemical Biosynthesis.Frontiers in molecular biosciences · 2020Review
- Synthetic Biology Based on Genetic Logic Circuit, Using the Expression of Drug Resistance, BCRP Pump in MCF-7 Cancer Cell Line.Iranian journal of pharmaceutical research : IJPR · 2020Article
- A novel C-terminal degron identified in bacterial aldehyde decarbonylases using directed evolution.Biotechnology for biofuels · 2020Article
- Review
- Continuous photoproduction of hydrocarbon drop-in fuel by microbial cell factories.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Is there a role for synthetic biology in addressing the transition to a new low-carbon energy system?Microbial biotechnology · 2019Article
- Biosynthesis, regulation, and engineering of microbially produced branched biofuels.Biotechnology for biofuels · 2019Review
- A consensus-guided approach yields a heat-stable alkane-producing enzyme and identifies residues promoting thermostability.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2018Article
- Chimeric Fatty Acyl-Acyl Carrier Protein Thioesterases Provide Mechanistic Insight into Enzyme Specificity and Expression.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2018Article
- Label-free non-invasive quantitative measurement of lipid contents in individual microalgal cells using refractive index tomography.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- The role of acyl-CoA thioesterase ACOT8I in mediating intracellular lipid metabolism in oleaginous fungus Mortierella alpina.Journal of industrial microbiology & biotechnology · 2018Article
4 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Biofuels are the most immediate, practical solution for mitigating dependence on fossil hydrocarbons, but current biofuels (alcohols and biodiesels) require significant downstream processing and are not fully compatible with modern, mass-market internal combustion engines. Rather, the ideal biofuels are structurally and chemically identical to the fossil fuels they seek to replace (i.e., aliphatic n- and iso-alkanes and -alkenes of various chain lengths). Here we report on production of such petroleum-replica hydrocarbons in Escherichia coli. The activity of the fatty acid (FA) reductase complex from Photorhabdus luminescens was coupled with aldehyde decarbonylase from Nostoc punctiforme to use free FAs as substrates for alkane biosynthesis. This combination of genes enabled rational alterations to hydrocarbon chain length (Cn) and the production of branched alkanes through upstream genetic and exogenous manipulations of the FA pool. Genetic components for targeted manipulation of the FA pool included expression of a thioesterase from Cinnamomum camphora (camphor) to alter alkane Cn and expression of the branched-chain α-keto acid dehydrogenase complex and β-keto acyl-acyl carrier protein synthase III from Bacillus subtilis to synthesize branched (iso-) alkanes. Rather than simply reconstituting existing metabolic routes to alkane production found in nature, these results demonstrate the ability to design and implement artificial molecular pathways for the production of renewable, industrially relevant fuel molecules.
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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.