TY - JOUR
T1 - Ethylene-Forming Enzyme and Bioethylene Production
AU - Eckert, Carrie
AU - Xu, Wu
AU - Xiong, Wei
AU - Lynch, Sean
AU - Ungerer, Justin
AU - Tao, Ling
AU - Gill, Ryan
AU - Maness, Pin Ching
AU - Yu, Jianping
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - Worldwide, ethylene is the most produced organic compound. It serves as a building block for a wide variety of plastics, textiles, and chemicals, and a process has been developed for its conversion into liquid transportation fuels. Currently, commercial ethylene production involves steam cracking of fossil fuels, and is the highest CO2-emitting process in the chemical industry. Therefore, there is great interest in developing technology for ethylene production from renewable resources including CO2 and biomass. Ethylene is produced naturally by plants and some microbes that live with plants. One of the metabolic pathways used by microbes is via an ethylene-forming enzyme (EFE), which uses -ketoglutarate and arginine as substrates. EFE is a promising biotechnology target because the expression of a single gene is sufficient for ethylene production in the absence of toxic intermediates. Here we present the first comprehensive review and analysis of EFE, including its discovery, sequence diversity, reaction mechanism, predicted involvement in diverse metabolic modes, heterologous expression, and requirements for harvesting of bioethylene. A number of knowledge gaps and factors that limit ethylene productivity are identified, as well as strategies that could guide future research directions.
AB - Worldwide, ethylene is the most produced organic compound. It serves as a building block for a wide variety of plastics, textiles, and chemicals, and a process has been developed for its conversion into liquid transportation fuels. Currently, commercial ethylene production involves steam cracking of fossil fuels, and is the highest CO2-emitting process in the chemical industry. Therefore, there is great interest in developing technology for ethylene production from renewable resources including CO2 and biomass. Ethylene is produced naturally by plants and some microbes that live with plants. One of the metabolic pathways used by microbes is via an ethylene-forming enzyme (EFE), which uses -ketoglutarate and arginine as substrates. EFE is a promising biotechnology target because the expression of a single gene is sufficient for ethylene production in the absence of toxic intermediates. Here we present the first comprehensive review and analysis of EFE, including its discovery, sequence diversity, reaction mechanism, predicted involvement in diverse metabolic modes, heterologous expression, and requirements for harvesting of bioethylene. A number of knowledge gaps and factors that limit ethylene productivity are identified, as well as strategies that could guide future research directions.
KW - Bioethylene
KW - Diversity
KW - Ethylene-forming enzyme
KW - Heterologous expression
KW - Mechanism
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84900632425&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1186/1754-6834-7-33
DO - 10.1186/1754-6834-7-33
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84900632425
SN - 1754-6834
VL - 7
JO - Biotechnology for Biofuels
JF - Biotechnology for Biofuels
IS - 1
M1 - 33
ER -