Bio-production of adipic acid from lignin aromatics and terephthalic acid in engineered escherichia coli Jack Suitor and Stephen Wallace The University of Edinburgh, UK Laboratory microorganisms can be programmed using modern synthetic biology to valorise waste carbon into value-added small molecules. Such reactions occur under mild reaction condition and can achieve overall synthetic transformations that would otherwise require multi-step chemical synthesis from fossil fuel feedstocks. My poster will outline our recent work on the bio-production of adipic acid from lignin-derived aromatic compounds and from terephthalic acid derived from plastic waste. Adipic acid is a prolific platform chemical that is used for the production of nylon-6,6 and is manufactured on a >2 billion ton scale every year. By designing a de novo pathway consisting of six enzymes from throughout Nature into a single bacterial cell, we have been able to achieve the one-pot synthesis of adipic acid from guaiacol and terephthalate in an engineered strain of E. coli.[1] This work demonstrates how cellular metabolism can be engineered to enable the valorisation of carbon from lignin and plastic waste into a valuable industrial molecule that would otherwise be derived from fossil fuels. References 1. ACS Synth. Biol. 2020, 9, 2472-2476
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