Heterologous Synthesis and Recovery of Advanced Biofuels from Bacterial Cell Factories

Title:Heterologous Synthesis and Recovery of Advanced Biofuels from Bacterial Cell Factories

Volume: 25 Issue: 2

Author(s): Sana Malik, Ifrah Afzal, Muhammad Aamer Mehmood, Huda Al Doghaither, Sawsan Abdulaziz Rahimuddin, Munazza Gull and Nazia Nahid*

Affiliation:

• Bioenergy Research Center, Department of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology, Government College University Faisalabad, Faisalabad-38000,Pakistan

Keywords: Advanced biofuels, metabolic pathway engineering, membrane efflux pumps, microbial cell factories, high titer, easy recovery.

Abstract: Background: Microbial engineering to produce advanced biofuels is currently the most encouraging approach in renewable energy. Heterologous synthesis of biofuels and other useful industrial chemicals using bacterial cell factories has radically diverted the attentions from the native synthesis of these compounds. However, recovery of biofuels from the media and cellular toxicity are the main hindrances to successful commercialization of advanced biofuels. Therefore, membrane transporter engineering is gaining increasing attentions from all over the world.

Objective: The main objective of this review is to explore the ways to increase the microbial production of biofuels by counteracting the cellular toxicity and facilitating their easier recovery from media.

Conclusion: Microbial synthesis of industrially viable compounds such as biofuels has been increased due to genomic revolution. Moreover, advancements in protein engineering, gene regulation, pathway portability, metabolic engineering and synthetic biology led the focus towards the development of robust and cost-effective systems for biofuel production. The most convenient way to combat cellular toxicity and to secrete biofuels is the use of membrane transport system. The use of membrane transporters is currently a serious oversight as do not involve chemical changes and contribute greatly to efflux biofuels in extracellular milieu. However, overexpression of transport systems can also be detrimental to cell, so, in future, structure-based engineering of transporters can be employed to evaluate optimum expression range, to increase biofuel specificity and transport rate through structural studies of biofuel molecules.

Cite this article as:

Malik Sana , Afzal Ifrah , Mehmood Aamer Muhammad, Al Doghaither Huda , Rahimuddin Abdulaziz Sawsan , Gull Munazza and Nahid Nazia *, Heterologous Synthesis and Recovery of Advanced Biofuels from Bacterial Cell Factories, Protein & Peptide Letters 2018; 25 (2) . https://dx.doi.org/10.2174/0929866525666180122125237