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METABOLIC ENGINEERING

Giving E. coli a newfound appetite for formate

By introducing a rationally designed metabolic pathway into the genome of Escherichia coli, Kim et al. have re-engineered central carbon metabolism to utilize the one-carbon intermediates formate and methanol for the first time, thus generating a biological platform for sustainable fuel and chemical production.

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Fig. 1: Renewable bioproduction enabled by a synthetic C1-assimilation pathway.

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Correspondence to Mary E. Lidstrom.

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Lidstrom, M.E., Wang, J. Giving E. coli a newfound appetite for formate. Nat Metab 2, 219–220 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-020-0187-8

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