Chemical compounds have, for many years, been produced industrially by natural or modified microorganisms, such as brewer’s yeast and the fungi responsible for antibiotic production. The development of molecular biology has opened up new horizons: it is now possible to modify the genomes of microorganisms in a targeted manner.
The full potential of these techniques has yet to be fully exploited: efforts are currently focusing on the strengthening of natural metabolic pathways. However, it should be possible to create entirely new metabolic pathways, making use both of enzyme activities that do not exist in nature and of novel metabolites.
We have developed just such a totally artificial metabolic pathway. This world first opens up new possibilities for synthetic biology, which will undoubtedly bolster traditional chemical synthesis in the next few decades.
The metabolic pathway we have developed makes it possible to transform renewable resources, such as sugar cane, beet or cereals, into isobutene, a synthon that can easily be converted into fuels and several polymers.
