(594e) Natural Product Synthesis from Lignin Aromatics Using Acinetobacter Baylyi ADP1

Two major focuses in sustainable chemical synthesis are reducing the environmental impact of individual processes and minimizing or recovering waste materials. Biological upgrading of lignin biomass can advance both goals. Lignin has proved a recalcitrant feedstock, but biological approaches can leverage the native metabolism of certain microbial hosts to take complex and heterogeneous feedstocks and simplify them to tractable starting points for upgrading. Recently, we demonstrated that one of these hosts, Acinetobacter baylyi ADP1, is highly advantageous for these applications owing to engineerability and capacity undergo rapid design-build-test-learn cycles. Here, we use these traits and ADP1’s native metabolism to covert mock alkali pretreated liquor (lignin) to two highly valuable natural products, vanillin-glucoside and resveratrol, creating strains with up to 22 genetic modifications including up to 8 heterologously expressed enzymes. In our approach we leverage preexisting aromatic species (vanillate, ferulate, and p-coumarate) to create shorter routes to these products, ultimately demonstrating this host’s potential as a platform for upgrading lignin derived aromatics waste streams to valuable goods.