Four Biobased Chemical Platforms Worth Watching
ID: 3929

Abstract: Mark Burk

The relentless rise and volatility of petroleum prices is stimulating the chemical industry to diversify its raw material base. Genomatica has established an integrated suite of computational and experimental technologies to design, engineer, and optimize novel organisms and bioprocesses for cost-advantaged and sustainable manufacture of chemicals.



Metabolic modeling and simulation technologies greatly accelerate the pace of industrial bioprocess development by providing optimum strain designs and engineering strategies, by facilitating data interpretation, and by guiding experimental activities throughout the entire development cycle. Unique pathways to a chemical are identified and verified as superior through genome-scale metabolic models that allow prioritization in terms of parameters such as yield, energy balance and redox balance. Subsequently a strain is designed via the proprietary OptKnock algorithm, which identifies sets of genes that must be deleted in order to tightly couple product formation to growth of the organism. Following introduction of the most attractive biosynthetic pathways and designated deletions, strains are subjected to adaptive evolution methods which use controlled selection pressure to optimize strain performance following genetic manipulations. In addition to achieving superior product yield and productivities, evolved strains are genetically stable and thus ideally suitable for cell recycle or continuous bio-processing with consistent high-level production.



The presentation will highlight successful implementation of this combined computational and experimental approach for engineering a microorganism that produces the industrial chemical 1,4-butanediol (BDO) directly from glucose and sucrose. In addition, development activities aimed at establishing a complete process for production and recovery of BDO at pilot scale and beyond will be described.













Mike O'Shea

CSIRO has significantly advanced developments reported in 2008 from The Crop Biofactories Initiative (CBI) and its progress in the areas of Industrial oils and Complex monomers. The research in the areas of industrial oils and complex monomers is aimed at the production, evaluation and modification of novel oil and fatty acids for a range of industrial applications including: chemical intermediates, oligomers, cross-linkable polymers, bioactive compounds, fuel additives and thermo/mechano-chromic devices.



The significant opportunities identified in the production and use of novel hydroxylated oils and fatty acids with novel hydroxy-group positions have further developed with new applications and production systems being developed offering a route to product availability in advance of the ultimate aim of crop based production next decade.



In parallel, CSIRO has identified novel pyrolysis catalyst systems to bio-based aromatic intermediates and has also developed new applications of these and their further derivatives to enhance the performance of emerging bio-based polymers.











Richard LaDuca

Genencor and the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company are developing BioIsoprene™, a revolutionary biobased alternative for the petroleum-derived chemical compound isoprene. BioIsoprene™ can be used for the production of synthetic rubber-which in turn is an alternative for natural rubber - and other elastomers. The development of BioIsoprene™ could make the tire and rubber industry less dependent on oil-derived products, such as synthetic rubber made from petroleum-derived isoprene monomer.



BioIsoprene™ is part of a strategic focus at Genencor to build biobased systems for biochemical and biofuel production. Technology development efforts are focused on development of an integrated bioprocess to produce polymer-grade BioIsopreneTM from renewable carbohydrate-based feedstocks and ultimately from raw materials derived from biomass-based feedstocks.



Genencor plans to manufacture and supply Goodyear with BioIsopreneTM through a strategic supply arrangement. Sales of BioIsopreneTM by Genencor to third parties are also anticipated for all market applications of high purity isoprene.













Thore Rohwerder

Thore Rohwerder, Roland H. Müller



Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Dept. Environmental Microbiology, Permoserstr. 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany. thore.rohwerder@ufz.de, r.mueller@ufz.de



Nowadays a growing demand for green chemicals and cleantech solutions is motivating the chemical industry to strive for biobased building blocks (BBB). Together with Evonik Industries the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research identified 2-hydroxyisobutyric acid (2-HIBA) as an interesting BBB for the synthesis of polymers. However, the tertiary carbon atom-containing 2-HIBA is rarely found in nature. In addition, the investigation of its conversion or synthesis by bacteria or other microorganisms has not attracted much attention. This situation changed in the last years when research focused on the degradation of the fuel oxygenate methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) since 2-HIBA has been identified as an intermediate in the degradation pathway, e.g. in the newly described MTBE-degrading bacterial strain Aquincola tertiaricarbonis L108. Search for the enzyme that connects this intermediate to the general metabolism led to the detection of a mutase. This enzyme catalyzed the reversible conversion of 2-hydroxyisobutyryl-CoA into 3-hydroxybutyryl-CoA, and was consequently termed 2-hydroxyisobutyryl-CoA mutase (2-HIBA-CoA mutase, HCM). This enzyme is a new representative of the CoA-carbonyl mutase family. The 2-HIBA-CoA mutase is the key step in the suggested whole cell process for the production of 2-HIBA. As substrates, any carbohydrates, alcohols, organic (fatty) acids, polyols etc. can be used, which ultimately can be derived from renewable carbon sources. An essential trait of the microbial strains to make them suitable as a catalyst is their ability for overflow metabolism, especially for the accumulation of poly-3-hydroxyalkanoates. Disrupting the latter process for connecting the carbon flow to 2-HIBA-CoA mutase will finally lead to the accumulation of the BBB 2-HIBA.





Moderator: Edna Vassilovski, Fish & Richardson PC (United States)

Presenter 1: Sustainable Chemicals through Biotechnology: 1,4-Butanediol
Mark Burk, Genomatica, Inc, (United States)  []

Presenter 2:  
Cameron Begley, CSIRO, (Australia)  [Confirmed]

Presenter 3: BioIsopreneTM: Development of a Bio-based Process for Production of Isoprene from Renewable Resources 
Richard LaDuca, Genencor® A Danisco Division, (United States)  [Confirmed]

Presenter 4 (if necessary): Synthesis of 2-hydroxyisobutyric acid from renewable carbon, use of a new mutase reaction in a biotechnological process 
Thore Rohwerder, UFZ, (Germany)  [Confirmed]

Panel Organizer:
Matthew Carr, Biotechnology Industry Organization, (United States)

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