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

主要研究者：Scott BantaNumber：1438263职务：SusChEM：通过化学无机自养细菌的遗传修饰从二氧化碳和电力中获得长链烃机构：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过程。 该项目将开发一种新的工艺，利用集成到电化学装置中的独特微生物将二氧化碳（一种温室气体）和可再生电力转化为液体燃料和化学品。将作出特别的努力，通过基因工程改造微生物的代谢来显著增加液态烃十七烷的产量。 此外，还将开发基因工程工具，使基因改造永久化，从而创造出能够在工业过程中利用电力和大气中的二氧化碳作为原料生产燃料和化学品的强大细胞系。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生产碳氢化合物。 独特的电燃料平台由两个集成反应器组成。 第一种是含有氧化亚铁硫杆菌细胞的生物反应器，该细胞能够在低pH下生长，使用二氧化碳作为其唯一的碳源，并将亚铁氧化为三价铁作为能源。 三价铁被送到电化学反应器，该反应器有效地将三价铁还原为亚铁。 联合反应器系统从电、水和空气中生产生物质。 这些细胞已经用两种不同的外源代谢途径进行了遗传修饰，用于化学和/或燃料生产，初步结果表明，细胞可以瞬时转化为从二氧化碳中生产少量十七烷。 为了推进这一新技术，增加十七烷和/或其他长链烃的产量将是至关重要的。 这将使用共转化来瞬时过表达或敲低关键代谢基因的表达，以确定将碳通量引导到燃料生产中的策略。 这项技术的进一步发展将需要将外源基因永久转化到这些细胞的染色体中。 新的方法将被开发来编辑A.在这种独特的宿主细胞系统中，基因和途径的染色体整合是通过氧化亚铁酶基因组来实现的。 最好的新细胞系将在综合电燃料平台中进行表征，以便从这些操作中获得的效率提高可以根据每千瓦时所用电力的燃料产量进行量化。 通过这些研究活动，该项目将培训一名哥伦比亚大学研究生，他还将帮助开发远程学习项目的内容，以建设西非专家在可持续能源系统和解决方案领域的能力。 本课程的主题也将纳入哥伦比亚大学的两门研究生选修课以及当地社区的其他推广活动。

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.