
Researchers from the biotech start-up LanzaTech, Northwestern University and the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have engineered a microbe to convert industrial waste gases carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide into acetone and isopropanol (IPA).

Engineered marine bacterium Vibrio natriegens produced high yields of succinic acid [Full subscriber]
Succinic acid is one of the top twelve platform chemicals used in pharmaceutical and cosmetic products as well as in the production of biodegradable plastics. It is currently derived mainly from petroleum-based processes. Researchers, led by Professor Bastian Blombach at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), have succeeded in producing good yields of succinic acid via the fermentation platform using the marine bacterium Vibrio natriegens.

Novel two-step process to convert glucose into hydrocarbons [Full subscriber]
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Minnesota have developed a technology combining fermentation and chemical refining that converts glucose into hydrocarbons found in gasoline.

Machine learning exploited to engineer yeast to produce itaconic acid [Full subscriber]
Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have engineered the oleaginous yeast Yarrowia lipolytica to produce the platform chemical itaconic acid using data integration and supercomputing power as a guide.

E. coli engineered to produce high yields of ectoine, an active component in some healthcare products [Full subscriber]
Researchers at Jiangnan University in China have engineered Escherichia coli strains for the high-yield production of ectoine.

The potential of synthetic biology expanded to produce chemicals not found in nature [Full subscriber]
Researchers at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley have engineered the microbe E. coli to produce a molecule that, until now, could only be synthesized in a laboratory.

Engineered E. coli has the potential to produce fuel and chemicals from CO2 [Full subscriber]
Researchers from Newcastle University, UK, have engineered Escherichia coli bacteria to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) using hydrogen gas (H2) to convert it into formic acid. The research raises the possibility of converting atmospheric CO2 to commodity chemicals.

CAZYmes from Trichoderma harzianum have potential for cellulosic biofuels production [Full subscriber]
Researchers at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil have found an enzyme from the Amazon fungus Trichoderma harzianum to be capable of breaking down biomass into sugars for subsequent fermentation into biofuels and chemicals.

Metabolic engineering of yeast with Crispr Cas 12a paves way for improved production of biobased products [Full subscriber]
Researchers from DSM’s Rosalind Franklin Biotechnology Center in Delft, the Netherlands, and the University of Bristol have shown how to unlock CRISPR’s potential for regulating many genes simultaneously, thereby opening the door to more efficient and sustainable production of biobased products.

Engineered bacteria produce super-strong spider silk [Full subscriber]
Researchers at Washington University, US, have engineered bacteria that can make fibres that are stronger and tougher than some natural spider silks.
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July ’22 raw sugar ended at 19.60 cents per lb on 25th May. Following the relative excitement that India would restrict sugar exports to 10 million tonnes in the 2021/22 […]
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