Biobased Fuels and Chemicals: Biosynthetic Pathway Engineering & Enzymatic Conversion

Biofuels and biochemicals represent a secure, renewable, and environmentally responsible alternative to petroleum-derived fuels and chemicals. Abundant but historically recalcitrant feedstocks such as lignocellulosic biomass, the non-edible portion of plant-derived biomass, are considered as cheap and renewable substrates with great potential in industry microbial fermentation to produce compounds with marginal profit. This session will focus on the biological production of biofuels and biochemicals from renewable feedstocks, with an emphasis on metabolic engineering of the enzymatic or whole-cell biocatalyst. Projects describing novel metabolic products or feedstocks or achievement of industrially-relevant yields, titers and productivity are welcome. In addition, projects describing progress on biomass degradation, sugar utilization, lignin utilization and microbial tolerance improvement to the inhibitors in lignocellulosic hydrolysates are particularly welcome. Consumption of other inexpensive yet recalcitrant feedstocks such as methane are also welcome.