Researchers at MIT have adapted the butanol pathway for the
synthesis of odd-chain molecules and have also developed a complementary
modular toolkit to facilitate pathway construction, characterization, and
optimization in engineered Escherichia coli bacteria.
The modular nature of the pathway enables multi-entry and
multi-exit biosynthesis of various odd-chain compounds at high efficiency. By
varying combinations of the pathway and toolkit enzymes, they demonstrated
controlled production of propionate, trans-2-pentenoate, valerate, and
pentanol—compounds with applications that include biofuels, antibiotics,
biopolymers, and aroma chemicals.
In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Hsien-Chung Tseng and Kristala L. J. Prather note
that their bypass strategy was effective even without the presence of freely
membrane-diffusible substrates.