Production of Biofuel

Green manufacturing industry based on plants and microorganisms has been a popular topic in recent years. Organisms can be transformed with gene coding for a protein of value, such as industrial enzyme. Biotechnology in plants and microorganisms plays important role in biosynthetic processes especially in biofuels, secondary metabolites, bioenergy, waste treatment and bioremediation.

Biofuel can be produced from agriculture, industry and domestic waste. Compared with fossil fuel, biofuel can be produced in short time and it's considered to have negative emissions. The traditional technologies of producing biofuels are mainly utilizing base material that can be used as human supplement, such as corn, beet, wheat and other energy crops. However, due to the rapid development of biotechnology in recent years, genetically engineered organisms have been generated for synthetic applications.

Routes to decarbonization by using biofuel (Love, et al. 2022)

Producing Biofuel with Cyanobacteria

Cyanobacteria is potential candidate in sustainable industry, due to its ability of converting sunlight energy in to relatively stable chemical energy. As microorganism with simple structure and relatively small genome, cyanobacteria can be genetically engineered easily and they can also be grown in basal medium easily. They are genetically edited to produce compounds related to biofuels, such as ethanol, gasoline, butanol, methanol and fatty acid.

Common Biofuels

• Biodiesel: It can be produced from waste, such as straw and wood fiber, instead of base that can be human supplement like corn and wheat. Microalgal and cyanobacteria are the most popular platform for producing biodiesel. With gene editing technology, they can provide higher yield and efficiency.
• Biobutanol: It has energy density higher than ethanol and 10% lower than gasoline. In most condition, it can be substitute of gasoline without additional modification. It can be produced from waste of algal oil extraction, as well as waste from other industrial production.
• Biogasoline: It is produced pro biomass, which is renewable energy source, such as lignocellulosic. Biogasoline has the same structure and same energy density as gasoline produced in traditional way.
• Biogas: Biogas mainly contains methane and carbon dioxide. Carbohydrate and protein can be converted in to biogas by anaerobic digestion.
• Methane: It can be produced in different methods, such as gasification, pyrolysis and anaerobic digestion.
• Ethanol: Also called alcohol. In traditional way, it's produced by fermenting sugars. With gene editing technology, microorganisms like yeast and cyanobacteria will be able to fermenting waste from industrial producing, such as straw and wood fiber.
• Bioethers: They are cost-effective compounds that can be produced from wheat and beet, as well as the waste glycerol from the production of biodiesel. With gene editing technology, organisms can have ability of producing bioethers with higher yield and efficiency.

With advanced and mature gene editing platform RecoNase™, Lifeasible offers services including gene knock-in and gene knock-out in cyanobacteria, chloroplast and yeast. Our experienced scientists have established efficient and high-precision gene editing toolkit, in which our customers can get satisfying results on time. Please feel free to contact us, get started with our professional services.

References

1. Love, J. (2022). "Microbial pathways for advanced biofuel production." Biochem Soc Trans. 50(2), 987-1001.
2. Show, PL. (2017). "A Holistic Approach to Managing Microalgae for Biofuel Applications." Int J Mol Sci. 18(1), 215.