Society for Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology

Industrial chemicals are the building blocks for a multitude of materials and polymers. Fine chemicals and pharmaceutical precursors, meanwhile, are used as building blocks to produce many important specialty products and drugs. Together, such products are entwined within our daily lives. At present, however, nearly all of these products are produced almost exclusively from petrochemical feedstocks. The use of microorganisms to convert biobased feedstocks to these same products is emerging as a transformational technology for sustainable chemical production. Rapid advances in metabolic engineering, systems biology, and synthetic biology have contributed to recent success in this field. This session will cover development of microorganisms and fermentation processes for the production of both fine and commodity chemicals from sugars or other biobased feedstocks, and the approaches used to develop them. The specific emphasis will be on the engineering of novel pathways and microbes for the production of non-natural products and/or non-traditional fermentation products. Various stages of the research workflow will be covered, from proof-of-concept research to commercial success stories.

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