Metabolic engineering of Clostridium autoethanogenum for ethyl acetate production from CO.

Background: Ethyl acetate is a bulk chemical traditionally produced via energy intensive chemical esterification. Microbial production of this compound offers promise as a more sustainable alternative process. So far, efforts have focused on using sugar-based feedstocks for microbial ester production, but extension to one-carbon substrates, such as CO and CO/H, is desirable.