Editor's Summary

3 January 2008

Aiming high in biofuels

'Higher' alcohols offer advantages over ethanol as biofuels thanks to their higher energy densities and lower hygroscopicities, and 'branched' alcohols have higher octane numbers than their straight-chain counterparts. But these other alcohols cannot be synthesized economically using native microorganisms. Now an Escherichia coli strain has been re-engineered to produce higher alcohols (including isobutanol, 1-butanol and 2-phenylethanol) from glucose, a renewable carbon source. The strategy involves diverting intermediates from the amino acid biosynthetic pathway to generate the desired alcohol and may facilitate large-scale production of biofuels by microbial fermentation.

Letter: Non-fermentative pathways for synthesis of branched-chain higher alcohols as biofuels

Shota Atsumi, Taizo Hanai & James C. Liao

doi:10.1038/nature06450

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (264K) | Supplementary information