Engineering to produce -muconic acid from biomass aromatics.

The platform chemical muconic acid (MA) provides facile access to a number of monomers used in the synthesis of commercial plastics. It is also a metabolic intermediate in the β-ketoadipic acid pathway of many bacteria and, therefore, a current target for microbial production from abundant renewable resources via metabolic engineering. This study investigates DSM12444 as a chassis for the production of MA from biomass aromatics.

Production of carotenoids from aromatics and pretreated lignocellulosic biomass by .

There is economic and environmental interest in generating commodity chemicals from renewable resources, such as lignocellulosic biomass, that can substitute for chemicals derived from fossil fuels. The bacterium is a promising microbial platform for producing commodity chemicals from lignocellulosic biomass because it can produce these from compounds in pretreated lignocellulosic biomass, which many industrial microbial catalysts cannot metabolize. Here, we show that can be engineered to produce several valuable carotenoids.

Redundancy in aromatic O-demethylation and ring opening reactions in and their impact in the metabolism of plant derived phenolics.

Lignin is a plant heteropolymer composed of phenolic subunits. Because of its heterogeneity and recalcitrance, the development of efficient methods for its valorization still remains an open challenge. One approach to utilize lignin is its chemical deconstruction into mixtures of monomeric phenolic compounds followed by biological funneling into a single product.