Engineered biocatalyst for styrene production from pyrolitic sugar

The economic viability of biomass conversion to transportation fuels and renewable chemicals to efficiently break down the plant cell walls to their constituent monomers and then convert the resulting monomers to value-added molecules. Styrene has been known as a monomer of a large volume and commodity petrochemicals applied in the synthesis of industrially important polymers and co-polymers. This talk will focus on the lignocellulosic pyrolytic sugars use as carbon source to produce styrene via co-expression of three enzymes with levoglucosan kinase, phenylalanine ammonia lyase and trans-cinnamate decarboxylase in Escherichia coli. Styrene has been produced on glucose and levoglucosan fermentation. Efficient detoxification methods with overliming and enzyme also have been compared and studied for pyrolytic sugar treatments. Further tests of styrene and inhibitors of pyrolytic sugar syrup effects on cell membrane also analyzed for the fermentation. Using cheap lignocellulosic carbon source to produce green chemicals is a promising approach for biotechnology development.