White Paper

Bioproduction of Aromatic Molecules: Engineering Biology towards Economic Viability

Bioproduction of Aromatic Molecules: Engineering Biology towards Economic Viability

Synthetic biology offers routes for manufacturing a diverse array of aromatic molecules from renewable feedstocks. Through enzyme optimization, metabolic engineering, and directed evolution, microbes can be engineered to produce high titers of specialty chemicals in industrially-relevant fermentation conditions.

But commercial and scientific leaders across the chemical industry routinely ask:

Can bioproduction routes achieve scale and match production costs of incumbent methods?
How much R&D investment is required to develop commercially viable bioproduction strains and what risks does that investment come with?
What novel molecules or properties does bioproduction enable?

Overview

We demonstrate the impact of taking a platform approach to synthetic biology R&D. We focus on three commercial programs currently underway to produce aromatic molecules in yeast. In each program, Ginkgo is de-risking a partner’s R&D and commercial objectives by applying scale and utilizing iterative learnings from previous programs.

Aromatic Molecules for Nutrition and Wellness

The first program highlights significant progress toward producing a target molecule in yeast for the first time publicly reported. Through iterative rounds of enzyme discovery and optimization, this program yielded a chassis strain with high flux through coumarate, a key bottleneck along the path to the target molecule and variety of other aromatic molecules.

Aromatic Molecules for Food Colorants

Leveraging this prior work – the “coumarate chassis strain” – a second program for a partner involved in the production of food ingredients had an advanced starting point. Their target is a different set of aromatic molecules produced in yeast downstream of coumarate.

Aromatic Molecules for Bio-based Material Intermediates

Finally, a third program aims to produce two aromatic molecules, bio-based intermediates for materials, in yeast. This program similarly leverages an advanced starting point – a yeast chassis strain with significant flux through a shared precursor: protocatechuate.

A Framework for Choosing a Target Molecule for Bioproduction

We close with our recommended approach for identifying which aromatic molecules could be good candidates for bioproduction. Specifically, we walk through the factors that inform a technoeconomic analysis so that commercial and technical leaders are aligned on the costs and the value of undertaking bioproduction R&D.

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Bioproduction of Aromatic Molecules: Engineering Biology towards Economic Viability