Production of Industrial Products from Natural Gas Using an Engineered Methanotroph Biocatalyst

Natural gas is one of the most economical and abundant sources of carbon currently available, and is therefore an attractive feedstock for the production of industrial products by fermentation. Methanotrophic bacteria use methane in natural gas as a source of carbon and energy and have been grown at industrial scale for production of biomass for animal feed. Due to a paucity of genetic tools available for methanotroph systems, methanotroph bacteria have not been extensively engineered for the production of bio-based heterologous products. We have developed a powerful suite of technologies that enables the rapid engineering and screening of methanotroph biocatalysts and applied it for the production of a variety of heterologous products from natural gas. We will describe challenges in developing this platform and the progress of engineering non-model methanotroph hosts for production of industrial products by gas fermentation.