Synthetic Biology and Future Production of Biofuels and High-Value Products

Abstract

Synthetic biology aims to build increasingly complex biological systems from standard interchangeable parts. The ideal microorganism for biofuel production may produce a single fermentation product and might possess high substrate utilization and processing capacities. Such microorganisms may also possess fast and deregulated pathways for sugar transport, good tolerance to inhibitors and product, and high metabolic fluxes. The choice to produce such an organism lies between engineering natural function and importing biosynthetic capacity which is affected by current progress in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. Synthetic biology is bringing together engineers and biologists to design and build novel biomolecular components, networks, and pathways and to use these constructs to rewire and reprogram organisms. Recent findings that plant metabolic pathways can be reconstituted in heterologous hosts and metabolism in crop plants can be engineered to improve the production of biofuels have given new hope for molecular biological approaches in improving food and biofuel production. The de novo engineering of genetic circuits, biological modules, and synthetic pathways is beginning to address these crucial problems and is being used in related practical applications.