Microbial production of medium chain length fatty acids

Abstract: The production of fatty acids from sugar substrates presents economic and technical challenges. Biomanufacturing of longer chain fatty acids needs to overcome relatively low theoretical yields and abundant supplies from existing plant based sources. Medium chain fatty acids have a more constrained supply. In addition, there is an improvement in theoretical yield if the molecules are not inhibitory to host microorganisms. To meet the challenge of developing an effective microbial medium chain biosynthetic pathway, Cargill created a synthetic pathway. In order to achieve commercially relevant performance, Cargill needed to identify solutions that could simultaneously achieve high specificity and high productivity with the same synthetic pathway.