Metabolic engineering for advanced biofuels production from Escherichia coli

Global energy and environmental problems have stimulated increasing efforts toward synthesizing liquid biofuels as transportation energy. Compared to the traditional biofuel, ethanol, advanced biofuels should offer advantages such as higher energy density, lower hygroscopicity, lower vapor pressure, and compatibility with existing transportation infrastructure. However, these fuels are not synthesized economically using native organisms. Metabolic engineering offers an alternative approach in which synthetic pathways are engineered into user-friendly hosts for the production of these fuel molecules. These hosts could be readily manipulated to improve the production efficiency. This review summarizes recent progress in the engineering of Escherichia coli to produce advanced biofuels.