Thursday, August 14, 2008 - 5:00 PM
Microbial Biosynthesis of Hydrocarbons: the FabH connection
Lisa Friedman, LS9, Inc., 100 Kimball Way, South San Francisco, CA 94080
The search for renewable alternatives to petroleum derived fuels and chemicals has led to a search for biological mechanisms of hydrocarbon biosynthesis. Hydrocarbons are ubiquitous in nature and are predominantly derived from the fatty acid and isoprenoid pathways. Numerous mechanisms have been proposed for the biosynthesis of hydrocarbons from fatty acid intermediates, however, no genes have been directly associated with these processes nor have these compounds been heterologously produced. A diversity of bacteria have been shown to produce mono, di, and tri olefins, compounds previously predicted to result from the head to head condensation of two fatty acid derived substrates. We describe the discovery of the genes and enzymes responsible for the biosynthesis of these hydrocarbons, their heterologous expression, and their engineering to produce a diversity of medium and long chain olefins. Olefin biosynthesis is associated with a cluster of four genes, oleABCD. OleA is representative of a new enzyme family within a superfamily of enzymes, which includes FabH, that catalyze Claisen condensations. The heterologous expression of oleA alone results in the in vivo production of aliphatic ketones, and OleA catalyzes the synthesis of ketones in vitro from acylthioester substrates. Heterolgous expression of OleABCD results in the production of straight chain and branched mono, di, and tri olefins, and this biosynthesis can be reconstituted in vitro with the addition of the appropriate cofactors. Insight into the biosynthetic mechanism and the applications of the engineering of this pathway for fuel and chemical production shall be discussed.
Web Page: www.ls9.com
See more of Natural Products in Three Dimensions
See more of Invited Oral Papers
See more of The Annual Meeting and Exhibition 2008 (August 10 - 14, 2008)
See more of Invited Oral Papers
See more of The Annual Meeting and Exhibition 2008 (August 10 - 14, 2008)