2 - Engineered yeasts for the production of biofuel and platform chemicals

Abstract

Ever-increasing energy demand, depletion of fossil fuels, and an alarming rise of global warming over the past few decades have shifted the global focus to renewable energy sources. Efforts are being made to convert a wide range of renewable feedstocks into fuel and chemicals with the help of numerous microbial cell factories. Yeasts are a widely used microbial platform in biotechnology for the production of biofuels and bio-based chemicals due to their well-established physiology, capability for high cell density and large-scale fermentation, and readily available tools for genetic manipulation. Concerns with traditional yeasts as a microbial production platform include achieving a wide variety of substrate utilization, maximum yield, and the optimum fuel and chemical qualities of the output product. Various pathways of yeasts are metabolically engineered using genetic, synthetic, and systems biology tools for the usage of a greater range of carbon sources and synthesis of variegated products and enhanced tolerance against fermentation inhibitors. A broad spectrum of targets such as transporters and gene regulatory sequences are explored with the help of the omics database and then manipulated appropriately using several engineering tools. This chapter highlights multiple strategies employed for the construction of novel yeast strains with enhanced capability of biofuel and bio-based chemical production and further areas of improvement to meet global demand and industrial requirements.