Carbon-fixing microbes enable sustainable manufacturing of biofuels and value-added products from waste CO2. The goal of our work is to expand the scope of sustainable biomanufacturing by utilizing the microorganism X. autotrophicus, a non-model microbe that can fix both carbon and nitrogen. Carbon dioxide, a waste gas, is used as the sole carbon source. Hydrogen, the electron donor, is derived from renewable electricity and water. The microbe also directly fixes nitrogen from air, replacing energy-intensive ammonium salts with the most abundant gas in the atmosphere. In this talk, I will discuss tools we’ve developed to engineer the metabolism of this organism and show how we’ve used those tools to create sustainable fertilizers and foods starting from gases.
