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Understanding And Improving Microbial Biofuel Tolerance As A Result Of Efflux Pump Expression Through Genetic Engineering And Mathematical Modeling, William James Turner
Understanding And Improving Microbial Biofuel Tolerance As A Result Of Efflux Pump Expression Through Genetic Engineering And Mathematical Modeling, William James Turner
Graduate College Dissertations and Theses
Recent advances in synthetic biology have enabled the construction of non-native metabolic pathways for production of next-generation biofuels in microbes. One such biofuel is the jet-fuel precursor α-pinene, which can be processed into high-energy pinene dimers. However, accumulation of toxic biofuels in the growth medium limits the possible fuel yield. Overexpression of transporter proteins such as efflux pumps can increase tolerance to biofuels by pumping them out of the cell, thus improving fuel yields. However, too many efflux pumps can compromise the cell as well, creating a trade-off between biofuel toxicity and pump toxicity. In this work we improve the …