Ethanol: A Model Biorenewable Fuel

Abstract

Lignocellulosic biomass is an attractive feedstock for ethanol production because of its abundance and low cost. However, organisms that are good ethanol producers tend to be poor utilizers of biomass-associated sugars, and organisms that naturally utilize biomass-associated sugars tend to be poor ethanol producers. Thus, metabolic engineering is needed to develop fermentation organisms that can produce ethanol from biomass in an economically viable process. We assert that this desire to produce ethanol from biomass not only requires metabolic engineering as it has shaped the development of the metabolic engineering field, just as our desire to produce ethanol has shaped the development of chemistry and chemical engineering.