Recent progress in hydrocarbon biofuel synthesis: Pathways and enzymes

Biofuels derived from hydrocarbon biosynthetic pathways have attracted increasing attention. Routes to hydrocarbon biofuels are emerging and mainly fall into two categories based on the metabolic pathways utilized: Fatty acid pathway-based alkanes/alkenes and isoprenoid biosynthetic pathway based terpenes. The primary focus of this review is on recent progress in the application of hydrocarbon biosynthetic pathways for hydrocarbon biofuel production, together with studies on enzymes, including efforts to engineering them for improved performance. (C) 2015 Feng-Ming Lin. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Chinese Chemical Society and Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved.