S203: Microbial production of a terpene-based advanced biofuel

Sesquiterpenes (C15) are potential Diesel or Jet fuel alternatives. They have branched and cyclic structure which improves their cold weather performance and adds more advantages to use sesquiterpenes as Diesel or Jet fuel alternatives. In nature, sesquiterpenes are mostly produced from plants, and the engineering of microorganisms that can produce sesquiterpenes has been an attractive topic to more and more researchers in the field of medicine, perfumery, and recently in biofuel field.

In this study, we designed and identified sesquiterpene compounds that have positive properties to be used as a fuel. We have tested the appropriate fuel properties of the target compounds, and engineered the heterologous biosynthetic pathway into two model hosts, E. coli and S. cerevisiae, to produce this sesquiterpene compound with a relatively high yield.

To achieve higher production titer of this potential sesquiterpene fuel molecule, we have optimized the pathway to accumulate the precursors using synthetic biology tools, and also engineered the host strain to make fermentation process more efficient.