Thrust 1: New Biocatalysts for Pathway Engineering

CBiRC will develop technologies for generating a series of biologically derived chemicals that will represent a new precursor landscape for producing commodity molecules or final chemical products. This landscape will be established via a new paradigm in combinatorial metabolism based on biocatalysts identified and characterized by Thrust 1 of CBiRC. These biocatalysts will be accessed from a wide variety of organisms that harbor different polyketide/fatty acid biosynthetic pathways. These metabolic processes offer flexible biochemical conversions that can reiteratively generate a homologous series of alkyl-chains, which carry different chemical functionalities at specific positions of the molecules. Theoretically, these metabolic processes can generate alkyl-chains that range from 3- to 18-carbon atoms; however, the initial focus will be on molecules that are of up to 6-carbon atoms. It is important to note that the focus of the work is not the synthesis of complex polyketides, but using the biocatalytic machinery of the polyketide/fatty acid pathways to produce smaller molecules.