Vikram Mubayi, Colleen B Ahern, Magdalena Calusinska, Michelle A O'Malley
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Polymer production is rapidly increasing, but there are no large-scale technologies available to effectively mitigate the massive accumulation of these recalcitrant materials. One potential solution is the development of a carbon-neutral polymer life cycle, where microorganisms convert plant biomass to chemicals, which are used to synthesize biodegradable materials that ultimately contribute to the growth of new plants. Realizing a circular carbon life cycle requires the integration of knowledge across microbiology, bioengineering, materials science, and organic chemistry, which itself has hindered large-scale industrial advances. This review addresses the biodegradation status of common synthetic polymers, identifying novel microbes and enzymes capable of metabolizing these recalcitrant materials and engineering approaches to enhance their biodegradation pathways. Design considerations for the next generation of biodegradable polymers are also reviewed, and finally, opportunities to apply findings from lignocellulosic biodegradation to the design and biodegradation of similarly recalcitrant synthetic polymers are discussed.
期刊介绍:
The journal is particularly interested in studies on the design and synthesis of new genetic circuits and gene products; computational methods in the design of systems; and integrative applied approaches to understanding disease and metabolism.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
Design and optimization of genetic systems
Genetic circuit design and their principles for their organization into programs
Computational methods to aid the design of genetic systems
Experimental methods to quantify genetic parts, circuits, and metabolic fluxes
Genetic parts libraries: their creation, analysis, and ontological representation
Protein engineering including computational design
Metabolic engineering and cellular manufacturing, including biomass conversion
Natural product access, engineering, and production
Creative and innovative applications of cellular programming
Medical applications, tissue engineering, and the programming of therapeutic cells
Minimal cell design and construction
Genomics and genome replacement strategies
Viral engineering
Automated and robotic assembly platforms for synthetic biology
DNA synthesis methodologies
Metagenomics and synthetic metagenomic analysis
Bioinformatics applied to gene discovery, chemoinformatics, and pathway construction
Gene optimization
Methods for genome-scale measurements of transcription and metabolomics
Systems biology and methods to integrate multiple data sources
in vitro and cell-free synthetic biology and molecular programming
Nucleic acid engineering.