Scientists Identify New Microbe-Produced Advanced Biofuel as an Alternative to Diesel Fuel

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
Sept 29, 2011

Researchers with the U.S Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have identified a potential new advanced biofuel that could replace today’s standard fuel for diesel engines but would be clean, green, renewable and produced in the United States. Using the tools of synthetic biology, a JBEI research team engineered strains of two microbes, a bacteria and a yeast, to produce a precursor to bisabolane, a member of the terpene class of chemical compounds that are found in plants and used in fragrances and flavorings. Preliminary tests by the team showed that bisabolane’s properties make it a promising biosynthetic alternative to Number 2 (D2) diesel fuel.

“This is the first report of bisabolane as a biosynthetic alternative to D2 diesel, and the first microbial overproduction of bisabolene in Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae,” says Taek Soon Lee, who directs JBEI’s metabolic engineering program and is a project scientist with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)’s Physical Biosciences Division. “This work is also a proof-of-principle for advanced biofuels research in that we’ve shown that we can design a biofuel target, evaluate this fuel target, and produce the fuel with microbes that we’ve engineered.”

Lee is the corresponding author of a paper reporting this research in the journal Nature Communications entitled “Identification and microbial production of a terpene-based advanced biofuel.” Pamela Peralta-Yahya is the lead author of this paper. Other co-authors are Mario Ouellet, Rossana Chan, Aindrila Mukhopadhyay and Jay Keasling

The rising costs and growing dependence upon foreign sources of petroleum-based fuels, coupled with scientific fears over how the burning of these fuels impacts global climate, are driving the search for carbon-neutral renewable alternatives. Advanced biofuels – liquid transportation fuels derived from the cellulosic biomass of perennial grasses and other non-food plants, as well as from agricultural waste – are highly touted for their potential to replace gasoline, diesel and jet fuels. Unlike ethanol, which can only be used in limited amounts in gasoline engines and can’t be used at all in diesel or jet engines, plus would corrode existing oil pipelines and tanks, advanced biofuels are drop-in fuels compatible with today’s engines, and delivery and storage infrastructures.

“We desperately need drop-in, renewable biofuels that can directly replace petroleum-derived fuels, particularly for vehicles that cannot be electrified,” says co-author Keasling, CEO of JBEI and a leading authority on advanced biofuels. “The technology we describe in our Nature Communications paper is a significant advance in that direction.”
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