1 research outputs found
Expanding the Product Profile of a Microbial Alkane Biosynthetic Pathway
Microbially produced alkanes are a new class of biofuels
that closely match the chemical composition of petroleum-based fuels.
Alkanes can be generated from the fatty acid biosynthetic pathway
by the reduction of acyl-ACPs followed by decarbonylation of the resulting
aldehydes. A current limitation of this pathway is the restricted
product profile, which consists of <i>n</i>-alkanes of 13,
15, and 17 carbons in length. To expand the product profile, we incorporated
a new part, FabH2 from <i>Bacillus subtilis</i>, an enzyme known to have a broader specificity profile
for fatty acid initiation than the native FabH of <i>Escherichia coli</i>. When provided with the
appropriate substrate, the addition of FabH2 resulted in an altered
alkane product profile in which significant levels of <i>n</i>-alkanes of 14 and 16 carbons in length are produced. The production
of even chain length alkanes represents initial steps toward the expansion
of this recently discovered microbial alkane production pathway to
synthesize complex fuels. This work was conceived and performed as
part of the 2011 University of Washington international Genetically
Engineered Machines (iGEM) project