S48: Approaches for fermentative production of caprolactam

Royal DSM N.V. is a global life-science and material science company actively developing processes for production of chemical building blocks and intermediates from renewable resources. This opens the possibility to produce renewable performance materials such as EcoPaxx™ for e.g. the automotive and telecommunication industries. As an industry leader in sustainability DSM takes a multidisciplinary approach including biocatalysis, metabolic engineering, fermentation and down stream processing. In this approach sustainability of process concepts and designs are evaluated early on to focus development on the most sustainable option. This results in innovative solutions and overall integrated strain- and process designs for large scale bioprocessing.

In this presentation we will highlight aspects of strain development and show results of our integrated approach to develop overall sustainable processes. This will be illustrated using caprolactam as an example to demonstrate our progress towards fermentative production of renewable building blocks for polymers. Caprolactam is the sole building block for nylon-6 and does not occur in nature. Results towards development of metabolic routes and identification of the required enzymatic activities will be shared.