(28a) Development of a Thermophilic Consolidated Bioprocessing Clostridum Thermocellum Platform for Ester Production from Cellulose

Esters are versatile chemicals and potential drop-in biofuels. To achieve an efficient green process for sustainable ester production, three critical challenges should be addressed including 1) sustainable feedstocks, 2) affordable operation cost, and 3) high production efficiency (e.g., titer, yield, and productivity). For decades, most studies have focused on developing mesophilic microbial cell factories using edible feedstocks that could be potentially difficult to address the first and second challenges. Here, we will present development of a thermophilic microbial factory for ester production directly from cellulose of lignocellulosic plant biomass. We employed Clostridium thermocellum to utilize cellulose as a feedstock and engineer a key enzyme(s) for ester biosynthesis to build an endogenous ester production pathway. This ester production process not only allows utilization of a sustainable feedstock, but also takes advantage of elevated operation temperature beneficial for downstream processing.