(360e) Metabolic Engineering for the Production of Medium Chain Fatty Acids and Alcohols in Escherichia coli

Medium chain length alcohols are useful in several commercial products, such as cosmetics, plastics, and surfactants. While short chain alcohols, like ethanol and butanol, are available as fermentation products, and longer chain alcohols are readily available as products from the Ziegler process, medium chain alcohols are produced in relatively small amounts. The biochemistry of oleochemical production is analogous to polymerization reactions, including initiation, elongation, and termination steps. We have identified different enzymatic modules that comprise these three steps and assembled metabolic pathways in the bacterium Escherichia coli for the production of medium-chain fatty alcohols and fatty acids. We further to seek to improve yield, titer, and selectivity of our fatty acid and alcohol producing strains by optimizing strain design and fermentation conditions.