earticle

영어

The conversion of biomass into biopetroleum (biohydrocarbons) is being considered as an alternative biofuel production process for the bioethanol production. The biopetroleum such as ethers, esters, isoprenes, alkenes and alkanes can be produced via engineered microorganisms.
These biohydrocarbons would be the best fuel type to generate from biomass. In this study, we evaluated a few recombinant Escherichia coli MG1655 strains for their growth and lipid production characteristics. The recombinant cells were engineered to overexpress a part or all of specific genes (accA, accB, fabD, and 3.1.2.14) which are known to have critical roles in the fatty acid synthesis pathway. As a preliminary experiment, we have evaluate the potential of those strains by comparing their growth rate and change in lipid content of the cells with those of wild type strains. Cell growth was measured by both determining OD600 and DCW, and the total lipid content was measured by determining the change in the weight after extracting the cells with chloroform + methanol solution first and then with chloroform + ethanol + 6N HCl solution next.
There was no significant change in the growth rate for the recombinant cells. The increases in the total lipid content of the recombinant cells were marginal. Further studies to evaluate more recombinant E. coli as well as other recombinant strains such as Bacillus and Pseudomonas are
ongoing.