SusChEM: Long chain hydrocarbons from CO2 and electricity via genetic modification of a chemolithoautotrophic bacterium

首席研究员：Scott bant编号：1438263标题：SusChEM：通过对一种化学岩石自养细菌的基因改造从二氧化碳和电力中产生的长链碳氢化合物机构：哥伦比亚大学国家需要开发用于生产液体运输燃料的碳中和工艺。该项目将开发一种新工艺，利用集成在电化学装置中的独特微生物，将温室气体二氧化碳和可再生电力转化为液体燃料和化学品。将特别努力通过对微生物的代谢进行基因工程来显著增加液态烃十七烷的产量。基因工程工具也将被开发出来，使基因修改永久存在，这将创造出强大的细胞系，能够在工业过程中使用电力和大气中的二氧化碳作为原料制造燃料和化学品。该项目的目标是开发一种新的电燃料平台，利用电力从大气中的二氧化碳中生产碳氢化合物。独特的电燃料平台由两个集成反应堆组成。第一种是含有氧化亚铁硫杆菌细胞的生物反应器，这种细胞能够在低pH值下生长，以二氧化碳作为唯一的碳源，并以亚铁氧化为铁作为能量来源。将三铁送入电化学反应器，有效地将三铁还原为亚铁。联合反应器系统利用电力、水和空气生产生物质。这些细胞经过基因改造，具有两种不同的外源代谢途径，用于化学和/或燃料的生产，初步结果表明，细胞可以瞬间转化为从二氧化碳中产生少量的十七烷。为了推进这项新技术，增加十七烷和/或其他长链烃的产量将是至关重要的。这将通过共转化来实现，瞬时过表达或敲除关键代谢基因的表达，以确定指导碳通量进入燃料生产的策略。这项技术的进一步发展将需要将外源基因永久地转化到这些细胞的染色体中。新的方法将被开发来编辑a.f erferrooxidans基因组，使染色体整合的基因和途径进入这个独特的宿主细胞系统。最好的新细胞系将在综合电燃料平台上进行表征，以便从这些操作中获得的效率改进可以根据每千瓦时所利用的电力的燃料产量来量化。通过这些研究活动，该项目将培训哥伦比亚大学的一名研究生，他还将帮助开发一个远程学习项目的内容，以建立西非专家在可持续能源系统和解决方案领域的能力。本课程的主题也将整合到哥伦比亚大学的两门研究生水平选修课程以及当地社区的其他外展活动中。

Principal Investigator: Scott BantaNumber: 1438263Title: SusChEM: Long chain hydrocarbons from CO2 and electricity via genetic modification of a chemolithoautotrophic bacteriumInstitution: Columbia University There is a national need to develop carbon-neutral processes for the production of liquid transportation fuels. This project will develop a new process to turn carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and renewable electricity into liquid fuels and chemicals using a unique microorganism integrated into an electrochemical device. Particular efforts will be made to dramatically increase the production of the liquid hydrocarbon heptadecane by genetically engineering the metabolism of the microorganism. Genetic engineering tools will also be developed to make the genetic modifications permanent, which will create robust cell lines capable of making fuels and chemicals in an industrial process using electricity and atmospheric carbon dioxide as the feedstock.The goal of this project is to develop a new electrofuels platform for producing hydrocarbons from atmospheric carbon dioxide using electricity. The unique electrofuels platform consists of two integrated reactors. The first is a bioreactor containing Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans cells which are able to grow at low pH using carbon dioxide as their sole carbon source and the oxidation of ferrous to ferric iron as an energy source. The ferric iron is sent to an electrochemical reactor which efficiently reduces the ferric iron back to ferrous iron. The combined reactor system produces biomass from electricity, water and air. The cells have been genetically modified with two different exogenous metabolic pathways for chemical and/or fuel production, and preliminary results show that cells can be transiently transformed to produce small amounts of heptadecane from carbon dioxide. In order to advance this new technology, it will be critical to increase the production of heptadecane and/or other long chain hydrocarbons. This will be accomplished using co-transformations to transiently over-express or knock-down the expression of key metabolic genes to determine strategies to direct the flux of carbon into the production of the fuels. Further development of this technology will require permanent transformation of exogenous genes into the chromosome of these cells. New methods will be developed to edit the A. ferrooxidans genome to enable the chromosomal integration of genes and pathways into this unique host cell system. The best new cell lines will be characterized in the integrated electrofuels platform so that the improvements in efficiency obtained from these maneuvers can be quantified in terms of yield of fuel per kW-hr of electricity utilized. Through these research activities, the project will train a Columbia University graduate student, who will also help to develop content for a distant-learning program to build the capacity of West African experts in the field of sustainable energy systems and solutions. Topics from this course will also be integrated into two graduate level elective courses at Columbia University as well as other outreach activities in the local community.