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Enzyme mechanism as a kinetic control element for designing synthetic biofuel pathways

Nature Chemical Biology volume 7, pages 222–227 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

Living systems have evolved remarkable molecular functions that can be redesigned for in vivo chemical synthesis as we gain a deeper understanding of the underlying biochemical principles for de novo construction of synthetic pathways. We have focused on developing pathways for next-generation biofuels as they require carbon to be channeled to product at quantitative yields. However, these fatty acid–inspired pathways must manage the highly reversible nature of the enzyme components. For targets in the biodiesel range, the equilibrium can be driven to completion by physical sequestration of an insoluble product, which is a mechanism unavailable to soluble gasoline-sized products. In this work, we report the construction of a chimeric pathway assembled from three different organisms for the high-level production of n-butanol (4,650 ± 720 mg l−1) that uses an enzymatic chemical reaction mechanism in place of a physical step as a kinetic control element to achieve high yields from glucose (28%).

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Figure 1: In vivo production of n-butanol.

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Acknowledgements

We thank K. Hirano for her work on the ter gene assembly during her rotation. B.B.B.-W. would like to thank the Aldo DeBenedictis Fund for a predoctoral fellowship, and R.J.B. would like to acknowledge the University of California, Berkeley, Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program. This work was funded by generous support from University of California, Berkeley, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation and the Dow Sustainable Products and Solutions Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA.,

    Brooks B Bond-Watts, Robert J Bellerose & Michelle C Y Chang

  2. Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA.,

    Brooks B Bond-Watts, Robert J Bellerose & Michelle C Y Chang

  3. Physical Biosciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA

    Michelle C Y Chang

Authors
  1. Brooks B Bond-Watts
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Contributions

R.J.B. constructed the plasmids for Ccr quantification and measured n-butanol production and Ccr-Stag levels in these strains. B.B.B.-W. carried out the remaining experiments. B.B.B.-W and M.C.Y.C. planned the experiments and wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michelle C Y Chang.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Figures 1–11 and Supplementary Tables 1–8 (PDF 1685 kb)

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Bond-Watts, B., Bellerose, R. & Chang, M. Enzyme mechanism as a kinetic control element for designing synthetic biofuel pathways. Nat Chem Biol 7, 222–227 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.537

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