Synthetic biology strategies to address waste CO2 loss during biofuel production

Abstract

Owing to differing degrees of reduction between substrates and products, biofuel production from carbohydrates inevitably releases a significant amount of CO2, reducing both overall carbon utilization efficiency and the sustainability of biofuel production processes. To address this fundamental and persistent challenge, recent studies have explored diverse metabolic engineering and synthetic biology approaches to either i) limit CO2 evolution by decreasing its generation or ii) recycle it through various biochemical mechanisms. Through these strategies, carbon that would have been wasted as CO2 is reduced, allowing carbon conversion efficiency to be significantly enhanced and greenhouse gas emission effectively mitigated, thus potentially leading to a more sustainable microbial process for biofuel production.