Biosynthesis of products from 1-carbon compounds

Abstract

An engineered microbe that contains a designed platform for the conversion of one-carbon substrates to chemical products is described. The designed platform embodies a new metabolic architecture that consolidates carbon fixation, central metabolism, and product synthesis into a single pathway. This is made possible by the key finding that 2-hydroxyacyl-CoA lyase, an enzyme in the α-oxidation pathway, is capable of catalyzing the C—C bond formation between formyl-CoA and aldehydes of different chain lengths, allowing for the elongation of the carbon backbone of said aldehyde by one-carbon units. These novel microbes present an opportunity for the production of chemicals from single-carbon feedstocks such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, formate, formaldehyde, methanol or methane.