Engineering Microbes to Produce Fuel, Commodities, and Food from CO2

Abstract

Summary: Humanity is facing two major challenges — the need to feed a growing population with limited land and freshwater resources and global warming, caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The capture of CO2 from the atmosphere and its subsequent utilization lies at the heart of these challenges. Biological systems for CO2 conversion to organic molecules present a promising avenue due to their high product specificity and modularity. The possibility of combining renewable-energy-harvesting systems along with synthetic-CO2-using microorganisms is especially promising. In this article, we discuss recent major advances in engineering microbes to use CO2 and other one-carbon molecules as the feedstock. We portray the gap in cost that integrated abiotic-biotic systems for CO2 conversion should close to become cost competitive by using the techno-economic data of algae as an existing reference solution.