Engineering for the production of renewable dicarboxylic acids from fatty acid based feedstocks

Dicarboxylic acids (diacids) are a class of compounds used to make polyesters, polyurethanes, and polyamides that are important in the manufacture of a wide array of consumer products.  The major diacids used industrially are adipic, sebacic, and dodecanedioic acid (DDDA) with market sizes of approximately 2,500 kta, 125 kta, and 45 kta, respectively.  Sebacic acid is produced from castor oil-derived ricinoleic acid while adipic acid and DDDA are produced from petroleum-based inputs.  Verdezyne has been developing a technology platform to provide manufacturers and consumers with renewable, yet cost-competitive alternatives to existing petroleum-based chemical intermediates.  This platform employs engineering of the omega- and beta-oxidation pathways to produce diacids from renewable sources.  The omega-oxidation pathway oxidizes the terminal end of an alkane to a carboxylic acid resulting in a fatty acid, or the terminal carbon of a fatty acid is oxidized to produce a diacid.  Beta-oxidation accepts both fatty acids and diacids into a cyclic chain-shortening pathway producing one acetyl-CoA for each turn of the cycle.  We have engineered the omega-oxidation pathway based upon the fatty acid composition of the feedstock, pairing the substrate specificity of the pathway with the major component of the feedstock.  The beta-oxidation pathway has been engineered to either be completely blocked or to have varying degrees of activity that control the chain length of the diacid product.  With this platform we have successfully converted mixed chain-length feedstocks to adipic acid, sebacic acid, and DDDA and we are commercializing the production of DDDA from lauric acid feedstocks.