An optimized one-carbon assimilation pathway via enzyme engineering

As the human population increases, there is an urgent need to produce more food, fuel, and chemicals while reducing CO2 emissions. I aim to engineer improved enzymes and metabolic pathways for carbon fixation, the biological process that converts CO2 to sugar and the origin of all carbon atoms in living organisms and fossil fuels. In my current project, I am developing the “formolase” pathway, a metabolic pathway rationally designed to allow industrial organisms such as E. coli to utilize formate as a carbon source. Formate can be efficiently produced from CO2 via electrocatalysis and serve as a chemical currency between renewable electricity and carbon-negative bioproduction of fuels and chemicals. Naturally formatotrophic microbes exist, but they are difficult to engineer and their formate-utilization pathways are theoretically less efficient than the formolase pathway. Moreover, certain enzymes of the formolase pathway, if optimized, could potentially be used to augment crop yield.

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