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SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

Bugging out for jet fuel

Nature Reviews Chemistry volume 6, page 520 (2022)Cite this article

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Replacing fossil fuel-derived energy-dense fuels used in long-haul shipping, aviation and rocketry is crucial to reduce carbon emissions, but remains non-trivial owing to synthetic challenges. Now, writing in Joule, Pablo Cruz-Morales and co-workers describe the production of polycyclopropanated fatty acid methyl ester (POP-FAME) fuels in bacteria with energy densities surpassing those from common rocket and aviation fuels.

Cruz-Morales and colleagues then iteratively explored strategies to increase POP-FA production. They overexpressed a SAM synthetase to increase this available precursor. Looking towards the iPKS machinery, they hijacked the use of rare codons to boost heterologous iPKS expression. They also induced the expression of two phosphopantetheinyl transferases (PPTases) to boost the transfer of phosphopantetheinyl from coenzyme A to the acyl carrier protein (ACP) — a key post-translational modification for PKS activity. Finally, they increased the expression of Pop4, which is the enzyme responsible for POP-FA release; the last step in fuelimycin production.

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Original article

  • Cruz-Morales, P. et al. Biosynthesis of polycyclopropanated high energy biofuels. Joule 6, 1–16 (2022)

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  1. Nature Reviews Chemistry http://www.nature.com/natrevchem/

    Stacey-Lynn Paiva

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  1. Stacey-Lynn Paiva
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Correspondence to Stacey-Lynn Paiva.

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Paiva, SL. Bugging out for jet fuel. Nat Rev Chem 6, 520 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-022-00415-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-022-00415-4

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