title: Metabolic engineering strategies for microbial synthesis of oleochemicals.
abstract: Microbial synthesis of oleochemicals has advanced significantly in the last decade. Microbes have been engineered to convert renewable substrates to a wide range of molecules that are ordinarily made from plant oils. This approach is attractive because it can reduce a motivation for converting tropical rainforest into farmland while simultaneously enabling access to molecules that are currently expensive to produce from oil crops. In the last decade, enzymes responsible for producing oleochemicals in nature have been identified, strategies to circumvent native regulation have been developed, and high yielding strains have been designed, built, and successfully demonstrated. This review will describe the metabolic pathways that lead to the diverse molecular features found in natural oleochemicals, highlight successful metabolic engineering strategies, and comment on areas where future work could further advance the field.
authors: Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States; Microbiology Doctoral Training Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States. Electronic address: pfleger@engr.wisc.edu.
authors: Brian F
authors: BF
authors: Pfleger
authors: Department of Biology and Biological Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden.
authors: Michael
authors: M
authors: Gossing
authors: Department of Biology and Biological Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden.
authors: Jens
authors: J
authors: Nielsen
mesh_terms: D005227:Fatty Acids / Q000096:biosynthesis*; D060847:Metabolic Engineering / Q000379:methods*; D010938:Plant Oils / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D005227:Fatty Acids; D010938:Plant Oils
keywords: Biodisesel; Fatty acid; Metabolic engineering; Oleochemical; Synthetic biology