title: Coupling chemical and biological catalysis: a flexible paradigm for producing biobased chemicals.
abstract: Advances in metabolic engineering have allowed for the development of new biological catalysts capable of selectively de-functionalizing biomass to yield platform molecules that can be upgraded to biobased chemicals using high efficiency continuous processing allowed by heterogeneous chemical catalysis. Coupling these disciplines overcomes the difficulties of selectively activating COH bonds by heterogeneous chemical catalysis and producing petroleum analogues by biological catalysis. We show that carboxylic acids, pyrones, and alcohols are highly flexible platforms that can be used to produce biobased chemicals by this approach. More generally, we suggest that molecules with three distinct functionalities may represent a practical upper limit on the extent of functionality present in the platform molecules that serve as the bridge between biological and chemical catalysis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Maine, 5737 Jenness Hall, Orono, ME 04469, USA.
authors.forename: Thomas J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Schwartz
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Iowa State University, 1140 L BRL, Ames, IA 50011, USA.
authors.forename: Brent H
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: Shanks
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1415 Engineering Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA. Electronic address: jdumesic@wisc.edu.
authors.forename: James A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Dumesic
mesh_terms: D055162:Biocatalysis; D060847:Metabolic Engineering