Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 10, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-08486-6
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Funding
- U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research [DE-SC0012555]
- Cancer Center Support Grant from the NCI [P30-CA14051]
- Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (WPI)
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) [DE-SC0012555] Funding Source: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
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Culture contamination, end-product toxicity, and energy efficient product recovery are long-standing bioprocess challenges. To solve these problems, we propose a high-pressure fermentation strategy, coupled with in situ extraction using the abundant and renewable solvent supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO(2)), which is also known for its broad microbial lethality. Towards this goal, we report the domestication and engineering of a scCO(2)-tolerant strain of Bacillus megaterium, previously isolated from formation waters from the McElmo Dome CO2 field, to produce branched alcohols that have potential use as biofuels. After establishing induced-expression under scCO(2), isobutanol production from 2-ketoisovalerate is observed with greater than 40% yield with co-produced isopentanol. Finally, we present a process model to compare the energy required for our process to other in situ extraction methods, such as gas stripping, finding scCO(2) extraction to be potentially competitive, if not superior.
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