(70c) Toward a Sustainable C1 Bioeconomy

Single-carbon (C1) substrates have emerged as promising renewable feedstocks for the production of food, fuels and chemicals by engineered microorganisms. This talk will present recent work from my group toward this goal, with an emphasis on the metabolic engineering of the acetogen Eubacterium limosum for the anaerobic conversion of methanol. In particular, in honor of Prof. Stephanopoulos’ birthday, I will describe how we used ¹³C metabolic flux analysis (¹³C-MFA) to gain new insight into acetogen metabolism, then coupled this with an advanced acetogen genetic engineering toolkit and bioreactor optimization to produce high-value target products with promising figures of merit.