French Christopher E
School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
J R Soc Interface. 2009 Aug 6;6 Suppl 4(Suppl 4):S547-58. doi: 10.1098/rsif.2008.0527.focus. Epub 2009 May 19.
To move our economy onto a sustainable basis, it is essential that we find a replacement for fossil carbon as a source of liquid fuels and chemical industry feedstocks. Lignocellulosic biomass, available in enormous quantities, is the only feasible replacement. Many micro-organisms are capable of rapid and efficient degradation of biomass, employing a battery of specialized enzymes, but do not produce useful products. Attempts to transfer biomass-degrading capability to industrially useful organisms by heterologous expression of one or a few biomass-degrading enzymes have met with limited success. It seems probable that an effective biomass-degradation system requires the synergistic action of a large number of enzymes, the individual and collective actions of which are poorly understood. By offering the ability to combine any number of transgenes in a modular, combinatorial way, synthetic biology offers a new approach to elucidating the synergistic action of combinations of biomass-degrading enzymes in vivo and may ultimately lead to a transferable biomass-degradation system. Also, synthetic biology offers the potential for assembly of novel product-formation pathways, as well as mechanisms for increased solvent tolerance. Thus, synthetic biology may finally lead to cheap and effective processes for conversion of biomass to useful products.
为使我们的经济走上可持续发展的道路，至关重要的是，我们要找到一种物质来替代化石碳，作为液体燃料和化学工业原料的来源。数量巨大的木质纤维素生物质是唯一可行的替代品。许多微生物能够利用一系列专门的酶快速高效地降解生物质，但却不产生有用的产品。通过异源表达一种或几种生物质降解酶，将生物质降解能力转移到具有工业用途的生物体上的尝试，取得的成功有限。有效的生物质降解系统似乎需要大量酶的协同作用，而对这些酶的个体作用和集体作用，我们了解得还很少。合成生物学通过提供以模块化、组合方式组合任意数量转基因的能力，为阐明生物质降解酶组合在体内的协同作用提供了一种新方法，并最终可能导致一种可转移的生物质降解系统。此外，合成生物学为新型产物形成途径的组装以及提高溶剂耐受性的机制提供了潜力。因此，合成生物学最终可能会带来将生物质转化为有用产品的廉价而有效的方法。
