Plant-Derived Terpenes: A Feedstock for Specialty Biofuels.
Research toward renewable and sustainable energy has identified specific terpenes capable of supplementing or replacing current petroleum-derived fuels. Despite being naturally produced and stored by many plants, there are few examples of commercial recovery of terpenes from plants because of low yields. Plant terpene biosynthesis is regulated at multiple levels, leading to wide variability in terpene content and chemistry. Advances in the plant molecular toolkit, including annotated genomes, high-throughput omics profiling, and genome editing, have begun to elucidate plant terpene metabolism, and such information is useful for bioengineering metabolic pathways for specific terpenes. We review here the status of terpenes as a specialty biofuel and discuss the potential of plants as a viable agronomic solution for future terpene-derived biofuels.
Biosciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA.
Ritesh
R
Mewalal
Biology and Soft Matter Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA.
Durgesh K
DK
Rai
Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
David
D
Kainer
Department of Plant Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA.
Feng
F
Chen
Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
Carsten
C
Külheim
School of Forest Resources and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.
Gary F
GF
Peter
Biosciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA. Electronic address: tuskanga@ornl.gov.
Gerald A
GA
Tuskan
D057005:Bioengineering; D056804:Biofuels; D010944:Plants / Q000737:chemistry*; D013729:Terpenes / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism
D056804:Biofuels; D013729:Terpenes
Eucalyptus; plant secondary metabolites; specialty biofuels; synthetic biology; systems biology; terpenes