Metabolic Engineering of Microbial Cell Factories for the Production of High Value Products from Plant Fatty Acid Metabolism

Fatty acid-derived biofuels and oleochemicals are an important group of target compounds in the field of synthetic biology. These compounds encompass a wide range of fatty acid metabolism such as free fatty acids, fatty alcohols, fatty aldehydes, fatty esters, alkanes, olefins, methyl ketones and waxes. At Conagen, our product development has been focused on fatty acid-derived flavor and fragrance chemicals with high economic value. In this presentation, we will talk about some of our representative products including hydroxy fatty acid-derived γ- and δ- lactones which are fruity, creamy and milky; α- linolenic acid-derived grassy cis-3-hexenol as well as jasmonates; and branched medium chain length fatty acid-derived capsaicinoids, the active ingredients in hot peppers. Our Natural-Lipo Platform covers gene discovery, strain engineering, process optimization, fermentation scale-up and downstream process. In strain development, we couple the screening of natural producers with pathway engineering of conventional microbes for different product features. Some examples will be given in the presentation.