Team:Arizona State

The Arizona State University iGEM team has taken on a project of creating biodiesel in a new and efficient way using Escherichia coli. Using a wax esterase, fatty acids and ethanol, which are both naturally produced by E. coli, can be combined to form biodiesel. However, E. coli uses the same intermediate products to produce both fatty acids and ethanol, which reduces the efficiency of this process. This problem can be avoided by engineering two different strains of E. coli to work in tandem. One strain will be focused on producing free fatty acids (FFA) through increased production of enzymes such as TesA and acc. The other strain will be focused on producing ethanol through the increased production of enzymes such as pdc and adhB. These two products can be combined in one of the two cells using a waxy esterase, producing the final biodiesel product. This form of cooperative production will hopefully produce more ethanol than current single strain methods using E. coli.