After Switching into Reverse, Rice Researchers Lead Biofuels Race

Researchers at Houston-based Rice University have found a way to produce biofuels and petrochemicals from glucose at a rate 10 times faster other methods.

In a paper published online in Nature, Rice's team described how they used a process, called reverse beta oxidation, to engineer fuel-producing E. coli bacteria at “a breakneck pace.” The bacteria were used to produce butanol, which can be used like gasoline in vehicle engines

In effect, the team used reverse psychology. "Rather than going with the process nature uses to build fatty acids, we reversed [it] to break them apart," said Ramon Gonzalez, associate professor of Chemical and Bimolecular Engineering. On a cell-per-cell basis, the bacteria produced the butanol about 10 times faster than any previously reported organism.

"That's really not even a fair comparison because the other organisms used an expensive, enriched feedstock, and we used the cheapest thing you can imagine, just glucose and mineral salts," said Gonzalez, who is lead co-author of the study, along with students Clementina Dellomonaco, James Clomburg, and Elliot Miller.

Gonzalez's laboratory has been in a race with hundreds of labs around the world to find green methods for producing chemicals like butanol that have historically come from petroleum.

"We call these 'drop-in' fuels and chemicals, because their structure and properties are very similar, sometimes identical, to petroleum-based products," he said. "That means they can be 'dropped in,' or substituted, for products that are produced today by the petrochemical industry."

Butanol is a relatively short molecule, with a backbone of just four carbon atoms. Molecules with longer carbon chains have been even more troublesome for biotech producers to make, particularly molecules with chains of 10 or more carbon atoms. Gonzalez said that's partly because researchers have focused on ramping up the natural metabolic processes that cells use to build long-chain fatty acids, rather than breaking it down.

"This is not a one-trick pony," Gonzalez said. "We can make many kinds of specialized molecules for many different markets. We can also do this in any organism. Some producers prefer to use industrial organisms other than E. coli, like algae or yeast. That's another advantage of using reverse-beta oxidation, because the pathway is present in almost every organism."

The research was funded by Rice University.

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