Higher alcohols: metabolic pathways and engineering strategies for enhanced production

Abstract

In the quest for identifying novel renewable energy sources, higher alcohols from fermentative processes have received enormous interest in the last decades. Commercial microbial butanol production through the traditional acetone-butanol-ethanol process was common in the first half of the 20th century, and many attempts are underway to revive this process for butanol production. In addition to butanol, other linear and branched higher alcohols hold great promise as alternative energy sources. Although Clostridium species can naturally produce butanol, most of the other higher alcohols are synthesized in nonnative hosts. This requires the construction of novel pathways, the introduction of heterologous genes, and extensive genetic manipulation of host strains. Therefore, this chapter aims to demonstrate metabolic pathways for the synthesis of various higher alcohols. Moreover, in this chapter, metabolic engineering studies for the production of higher alcohols are reviewed. Recent advances and challenges associated with the microbial synthesis of higher alcohols are discussed. © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.