Metabolic engineering of yeast for advanced biofuel production

Abstract

Natural sources of coal, petroleum, and gas-based conventional fuels are rapidly depleting due to their extensive consumption. Henceforth, biofuels produced by microbial systems using cost-effective bioprocesses utilizing renewable substrates are getting tremendous attention nowadays and could be an alternative to fossil fuels. In this aspect, metabolically engineered yeasts are being widely used for the production of low viscosity and high-density advanced biofuel molecules like long-chain alcohols, free fatty acids, isoprene, α-farnesene, limonene, alkanes, squalene, and butanol. Model yeast species, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, methylotrophic species Pichia pastoris, and oleaginous species Yarrowia lipolytica have been targeted in recent years for metabolic engineering to produce advanced biofuels due to their thoroughly explored genetics, metabolome, and physiology. Furthermore, they can grow at a broad temperature range and assimilate high sugar concentrations with wide pH, which allows them to be great single-cell factories to produce biofuels. Apart from traditional cloning and engineering methods, synthetic biology tools have been evolved and employed for directing the central metabolic pathway to synthesize desired biofuel molecules. In this chapter, synthetic biology approaches in engineering yeasts have been discussed with the production of various advanced biofuel molecules. © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.