(217f) Interfacing Electrochemical and Biological Processes Enables Efficient Bioproducts Synthesis from CO2

Photosynthesis converting carbon dioxide to macromolecules (i.e., nutrients and commodity products) plays a fundamental role in the life circle. Such sustainable approaches could be elevated to the industrial level to manufacture environment-benign, renewable bioproducts from CO₂. Integrating electrochemical and biological synthetic pathways can overcome the carbon fixation barrier and convert CO₂ to diverse, high-value chemicals. By leveraging the high efficiency of chemical catalysis and carbon assimilation design through synthetic biology, we have successfully used CO₂ as the sole carbon source to continuously produce bioplastics polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) with high yield and significantly yield improved efficiency. The hybrid chem-bio process has innovatively utilized soluble C2 molecules as the key intermediates for energy/electron/mass transfer from chemical catalysis to biological fermentation and presented a four-tier design to integrate the electrochemical CO₂ reduction and the microbial conversion. The new integrated process has significantly overcome the individual limitations of chemical catalysis and biological conversion and created novel routes for future diverse biomolecules production from CO₂ with improved carbon conversion efficiency.