Rational design of microbial strains for novel biochemical products

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Increased volatility in the petrochemical feedstocks has necessitated a paradigm shift towards the use of biomass based feedstocks for the synthesis of transportation fuels. In contrast, there have been very few instances of microbial strain engineering for large-scale commodity chemicals with the exception of 1,3 propanediol (DuPont), lactic acid (Cargill), and 1,4 butanediol (Genomatica). A common feature among all of these chemicals is that they are derived primarily from central metabolism. The success of these efforts clearly motivates the microbial strain engineering efforts for other chemicals which are further removed from central metabolism. These include dicarboxylic acids such as succinic, malic, fumaric, itaconic and adipic acids as well as levulinic acid. However, for chemicals such as adipic acid, the synthesis pathways are not present in