Georgia Institute of Technology, Joint BioEnergy synthesize pinene
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Joint BioEnergy Institute have engineered a bacterium to synthesize pinene, a hydrocarbon produced by trees that could potentially replace high-energy fuels, such as JP-10, in missiles and other aerospace applications. With improvements in process efficiency, the biofuel could supplement limited supplies of petroleum-based JP-10, and might also facilitate development of a new generation of more powerful engines. However, these process inhibitions will be challenging to address:
“We found that the enzyme was being inhibited by the substrate, and that the inhibition was concentration-dependent,” said assistant professor Pamela Peralta-Yahya. “Now we need either an enzyme that is not inhibited at high substrate concentrations, or we need a pathway that is able to maintain low substrate concentrations throughout the run. Both of these are difficult, but not insurmountable, problems.”
Funded by Georgia Tech startup funds awarded to Peralta-Yahya’s lab and by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the research was reported February 27, 2014, in the journal ACS Synthetic Biology.
Category: Research
