SBIR Phase I: A carbon conserving platform technology for the microbial production of medium chain fatty acids from crude glycerol

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力将是开发一种基于发酵的技术，能够利用富含甘油的废液作为原料，可再生和可持续地生产中链脂肪酸--一种广泛使用的重要工业化学品。这些化工产品构成了一个价值数十亿美元的不断增长的市场，应用于调味品、香水、个人护理、塑料、纺织和制药行业。这项技术还将为生物柴油行业产生的现有富含甘油的废流创造新的高价值用途，这可以极大地提高生物柴油与化石柴油的经济竞争力，特别是在低油价时代。因此，这种基于发酵的技术的商业化将成为开发其他环保技术的基础，这些技术用于生产其他工业化学品，为每年约8000亿美元的石化行业做出贡献，进而为帮助环境、造福社会和建设可持续的未来创造新的就业机会。此外，该SBIR项目将建立碳节约技术，作为开发基于发酵的下一代化学品生产技术的基础。该SBIR第一阶段项目建议开发一种独特的碳节约(C2)平台技术，以使粗甘油等可再生原料能够以具有成本竞争力的方式可持续地生产各种脂肪化学品。C2平台技术包括一系列非天然生物合成途径，可以最大限度地减少/消除生产过程中二氧化碳的碳损失，从而使理论产量比现有技术提高高达50%。与现有技术相比，提高可实现的产量以及由C2技术实现的厌氧生产过程是建立具有成本竞争力的生物过程的两个关键特征，这对商业成功至关重要。这个第一阶段项目的一个目标是演示如何利用C2技术从粗甘油中生产高价值脂肪酸--己酸。对于第二个目标，将实施酶筛选、菌株开发和代谢工程方法，以改进从粗甘油生产己酸的指标(即，更高的滴度、速率和产量)。实现这些目标将大大降低C2技术的风险，并确立其在商业层面上生产具有成本优势的己酸的商业潜力。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project will be the development of a fermentation-based technology that enables the renewable and sustainable production of medium-chain fatty acids - an important class of widely used industrial chemicals - using glycerol-rich waste streams as feedstocks. These chemical products constitute a growing multi-billion dollar market with applications in the flavoring, fragrances, personal care, plastics, textile, and pharmaceutical industries. This technology also will create new high-value uses for existing glycerol-rich waste streams generated within the bio-diesel industry, which can greatly improve the economic competitiveness of bio-diesel with fossil diesel, especially in an era of low oil prices. Thus, commercialization of this fermentation-based technology will serve as a foundation for developing additional eco-friendly technologies for the production of other industrial chemicals that contribute to the ~$800 billion/year petrochemical industry, in turn creating new jobs for helping the environment, benefiting society, and building a sustainable future. In addition, this SBIR project will establish a carbon conservation technology as the basis for developing the next-generation of fermentation-based chemical production technologies.This SBIR Phase I project proposes to develop a unique carbon conserving (C2) platform technology to enable the cost-competitive and sustainable production of a variety of fatty chemicals from renewable feedstocks such as crude glycerol. The C2 platform technology comprises a series of non-natural biosynthetic pathways that minimize/eliminate carbon loss as CO2 during production, thereby improving theoretical yields over the state of the art by as much as 50%. The improved achievable yields along with the anaerobic production processes enabled by the C2 technology are two crucial features for establishing bioprocesses with cost-competitive economics relative to incumbent technologies, which is critical for commercial success. One goal of this Phase I project will be to demonstrate the production of a high-value fatty acid, hexanoic acid, from crude glycerol and using the C2 technology. For the second goal, enzyme screening, strain development, and metabolic engineering approaches will be implemented for improving hexanoic acid production metrics (i.e., higher titers, rates, and yields) from crude glycerol. Accomplishing these goals will substantially de-risk the C2 technology and establish its commercial potential for the cost-advantaged production of hexanoic acid at the commercial level.